The goal of OutsideThePlane.org is to foster a renewed interest in and understanding of non-Euclidean geometries, and to do so across a broad spectrum of the population.  Particularly important to the project is the focus on public school level education as a prime avenue for engendering non-Euclidean geometric ideas in general, as an arena for empowering students (in any phase of life) to engage multiple, diverse axiom sets, and for the encouraging of everyone towards creative thinking in mathematics.

Currently our website contains concise lesson plans for one-class-period activities at various grade levels.  While some lesson plans form a short logical sequence of ideas, many are self-contained.  Our belief is that even one day of exposure to a system that differs markedly from Euclidean geometry provides much needed contrast to the standard geometry curriculum.  But such experience ultimately further solidifies one's understanding of Euclidean geometry.  Moreover, dealing with multiple axiom sets engenders skills that typically are needed in all academic pursuits, and in multiple other contexts as well.

Use of materials found at OutsideThePlane.org by OTP members is permitted, indeed encouraged, and is free; the sole requirement for their use is printed acknowledgement of the origin of said materials from the OutsideThePlane.org website. Members may submit a lesson for inclusion on our website here.  Contact information is found here.

Currently, membership is free; however, we do require potential members to register with the organization, and to provide an e-mail address.

Some of our categories:

Generalized traffic flow

Box-house geometries

Portal-gate systems

Snell Geometry

Our definition of 'non-Euclidean geometry' is intentionally broad. 

In particular, typical systems encountered here are not homogeneous.  Nevertheless, these systems are quite evidently geometric, and each sports its own set of axioms.  Some bear close resemblance to familiar systems, others perhaps not so much.  But each provides an opportunity to engage the unknown, and thereby to learn something interesting, even surprising.  Those unexpected scenes that give us those 'wow' moments tend to be the ones we remember the most fondly; we gain the most insight from those.