chris_75
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I was wondering what the theoretical area of contact between two touching spheres would be. After thinking about this for some time I've come to the conclusion that they would basically meet at a single point, much like a tangent to a circle on a cartesian plane, and whatever little information I could find related to this on the internet supports this. Although, apparently, a 'point' has no actual size. I'm finding this hard to come to terms with- if two spehere met at a single point, which technically has no area or magnitude, how are they touching? Wouldn't they have a shared area between them, even if the area was only one atom?
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Area of contact between two spheres/size of 'point'
in Mathematics
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Thanks for your quick response.
I think I understand what you mean- So basically in the real world, depending on the compressibility of the material there would obviously be an area (however small), although in pure mathematics they would meet at a single point, which through research as I've found, according to Euclid is 'that which has no part' I.e. no area, volume, size etc. I just find it difficult to really comprehend that two things can be touching at a 'point', however the 'point' joining them is techinically zero in magnitude (in turn potentially leading one to the assumption they aren't touching...).
Or maybe I'm just too tired to really give this enough thought.