At work we somehow landed on the topic of how many holes a human has, which then evolved into a heated discussion on the classic question of how many holes does a straw have.
I think it’s two, but some people are convinced that it’s one, which I just don’t understand. What are your thoughts?
A regular straw has zero holes. The central cavity, through which beverages flow, is not part of the straw, and hence it’s endpoints are not holes in the straw.
A straw is topologically the same as a donut. It absolutely has one hole.
Doughnuts don’t have holes, “donutholes” notwithstanding. A doughnut is a torus. If you poke through the side of a doughnut, then it has a hole.
Take a pancake. Put a hole in it. It’s now a torus.
Sure, but it’s a pancake with a hole in it. Pancakes ought to be disks (which is, topologically, a squashed sphere).
If you put a hole in a doughnut it is no longer a torus. A hole deforms the manifold of an object.
Just realized humans are topological donuts
Removed by mod
You guys are all getting down voted and this misses out on the pure entertainment value of these comments
Thought so, donut.
If Gordon Ramsey were a cartographer…
Almost. First you need to choose the minimum size of a hole. If you define a hole as something just a bit larger than skin pores, a human has 7 holes. Even when defining a hole as something around 1cm, you have at least 3 holes (your nostrils, mouth and anus share one cavity).
by that logic, holes do not exist. holes are by definition not part of the material.
But they are (edit: holes are) present where you’d expect the material of the object. No one expects a straw to be a solid cylinder, ergo, the central cavity is not a hole.
That’s not how it works. It’s pretty unanimously understood that a donut has a hole, yet nobody expects material to be there, even though there are donuts without holes.
There are no straws without a hole. A straw without a hole is a stick. The hole is an integral part of the straw.
I see, so like, if it identifies as a hole it’s not a hole? So a cheese grater has no holes. But if I jam a screwdriver through the cheese grater, now it has a hole? What if I like the new hole and want to consider it a part of the cheese grater? Do we hold a vote on which hole identifies as a property of the object? Or do objects self-identify? I don’t speak cheese grater, this is going to get difficult.