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Spheres, how many sides??


-Demosthenes-

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A sphere has one side, or two if it's hollow. You can see if something is infinite this way: - if it fits in your hand, it's not infinite.

 

And the mobius band works very well. Usually using paper and sticky tape.

 

Any other answers probably belong in the philosophy forum, unless the word infinite is replaced with perpetual!

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Sayonara³ said in post # :

A side is an extrusion between two vertices.

 

A sphere has no vertices.

 

Therefore: Zero.

or shperes have infinite verticies, therefore infinite.

 

but i agree with the "not one" part of this.

one side came from inside and outside. these are not actual sides, they only refer to the placement of an object in relation to another object.

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Sayonara³ said in post # :

"Infinite" doesn't come into it. If it has lines that close off planes, it's not a sphere.

but, the only way for infinite sides to fit in a finite space is to have each side infinitely small, and unable to close off a plane.

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iglak said in post # :

i'm missing something here... (i don't understand what you mean)

Instead of using the nature of a sphere to prove it had no sides, you started from the assumption it had infinite sides then squeezed the reasoning in, so to speak.

 

A sphere's surface can't have closed (or open) sides because it's continuous in every direction.

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Sayonara³ said in post # :

Instead of using the nature of a sphere to prove it had no sides, you started from the assumption it had infinite sides then squeezed the reasoning in, so to speak.

 

A sphere's surface can't have closed (or open) sides because it's continuous in every direction.

ah, i see

 

well, a line could be said to have infinite points, and a plane could be said to have infinite lines (and thus infinite points too). a sphere shaped plane could be said to have those too (since it's just a plane). it is entirely appropriate to count each point as a vertex. since each point is infinitely close to the next point, each side is only one point, and thus not 3 or more lines closing off a plane.

 

also, saying there are zero sides doesn't make sense in my mind, that would indicate that it doesn't exist (i mean i can understand saying zero, i just thing infinite is more accurate).

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iglak said in post # :

well, a line could be said to have infinite points, and a plane could be said to have infinite lines (and thus infinite points too). a sphere shaped plane could be said to have those too (since it's just a plane). it is entirely appropriate to count each point as a vertex. since each point is infinitely close to the next point, each side is only one point, and thus not 3 or more lines closing off a plane.

That's not a sphere. It's a mesh.

 

also, saying there are zero sides doesn't make sense in my mind, that would indicate that it doesn't exist (i mean i can understand saying zero, i just thing infinite is more accurate).

Yes and no. In the case where I said there were no sides, the assumptions is that "side" and "surface" are not synonymous terms.

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How many sides? Depends on how many pyramids you glue to it :)

 

Seriously though mathematically it can be said that the number of sides of a circle tends to infinite as the length of each side tends to zero. Anything more than that and you are getting into philosophy of maths.

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