this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
357 points (97.3% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35393 readers
2 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
357
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

I would have asked this on a math community but I couldn't find an active one.

In a spherical geometry, great circles are "straight lines". As such, a triangle can have two or even three right angles to it.

But what if you go the long way around the back of the sphere? Is that still a triangle?

(Edit:) I guess it's a triangle! Fair enough; I can't think of what else you would call it. Thanks, everyone.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Yes, it has three corners and three edges. It is a triangle.

[–] towerful 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

What if it had 3 corners and 4 edges? Or 4 corners and 3 edges?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

If a shape has 3 corners and 4 edges, it is incomplete or open and therefore not a shape yet but a collection of edges (or possibly, two triangles that share an edge).

A shape with 4 corners and 3 edges is not possible. An edge cannot have a corner in the middle of it, that would make it two edges.

[–] towerful 2 points 2 months ago

I felt like adding something about the specific case of 180° between edges and a vertice.
Makes sense.
And I guess too many vertices means an open set of edges (ie not close, this not a shape).
I was kinda hoping for a strange edge case, like a mobius strip or Klein bottle.

I guess a mobius strip is a 2d representation of a 1d paradigm. And a klein bottle is a 3d representation of a 2d paradigm.
It would be too much to ask of a 1d representation of a ??d paradigm.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Why the down votes? Bro asking a question and being legit curious, don't be hating on someone that's looking to challenge what they know just because it's trivial to you.

[–] towerful 4 points 2 months ago

I feel my comment adds to the discussion and wants more details.
But it was too simply phrased.
I guess the details of such a question should be obvious. And if you need the details, the question doesn't actually add the the discussion... It just seems idiotic!

I felt like there might be a really cool scenario where a vertice isn't considered a vertice.
Like, there actually might be some case on a 2d plane "where actually" applies.
I'm fine being wrong

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Welcome to Lemmy, first time?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't think that can be a thing.

[–] towerful 2 points 2 months ago

Yeh, seems not

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

It doesn't matter that the edges are curved?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If you were to walk this route along the surface of the earth, you would walk in perfectly straight lines apart from the three turns.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

No such thing. Even if you were walking on a surface with no change in elevation, the acceleration due to gravity would cause your path to be curved as it followed the curvature of the planet.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Curved relative to what?

Edit: Nvm, I understood what you mean. But I think it's a pedantic take. They obviously mean it in the context of the surface of the sphere.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

They're not curved; the space they're embedded in is curved.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

The space itself has canonical curvature >.>

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Well that depends on your definition of curved... If I look at this image from a 3 dimensional coordinate system that includes the sphere, the edges are definitely curved. Of course, if you look at this from the coordinate system "surface of the sphere" then I would agree with you. There are 2 ways to look at this and decide if it is a triangle, and the bro you responded to didn't understand this and needs it explained.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't think this is relevant. Using your first definition there is no possible way to walk in a straight line on a sphere. While true in that context I don't think it's what most people are meaning by "straight line".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

But it's absolutely clear that the first definition is meant by the person that is being responded to. That is why the clarification is needed. This is not about "most people", but this specific one person in this specific comment thread. "It doesn’t matter that the edges are curved?" is only said by someone that thinks in the first definition, not in the second.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

The edges curve in 3d space, but not relative to the sphere.