Re: How do you draw a straight line?

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Article #4826

#4826

From: chrisman
Date: Tue, 06 Oct 1992 20:13

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In article <1992Oct6.142703.20829@b11.b11.ingr.com> craig@jido.b11.ingr.com writes:
>In article <stephen.718357265@mont> stephen@mont.cs.missouri.edu (Stephen Montgomery-Smith) writes:
>   How about pulling a piece of string taut?  Won't that give a straight line?
>   Stephen
>
>Hmmmmmmm ...
>"No power on Earth, however great,
>Can stretch a string, however fine,
>Into a horizontal line
>That shall be absolutely straight."
>-- Author unremembered, it's in _Fantasia Mathematica_.

Indeed, a stretched string won't be completely straight, because
of the influence of gravity (gusts of wind, Brownian motion, ...)
no matter what the tension on the string.

Besides, if we want a machine that uses the "definition" to get
a straight line, how about a laser?  For the physicist (not the
mathematician), I suppose that the path followed by a beam o
light is the closest thing to a definition of a straight line.

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!agate!wheatena.berkeley.edu!chrisman
From: chrisman@wheatena.berkeley.edu (chrisman)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math
Subject: Re: How do you draw a straight line?
Date: 6 Oct 1992 20:13:09 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Math. Department.
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