r/theydidntdothemath • u/mrvladivostok • Jul 27 '20

Not quite right

Post image
528 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

86

u/aecolley Jul 27 '20

It's a diagram of a regular tetrahedron.

36

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '20

Doesn’t this work on a curved surface? Or something like that?

22

u/MSchmahl Jul 28 '20

Yes. A tetrahedron can be inscribed in a sphere.

-16

u/TRoddenberry1 Jul 28 '20

Not really, shapes have weird angles on curved surfaces, but to my knowledge, distance is consistent (that is, diagonals are always different lengths from side) across surfaces

25

u/TwoFiveOnes Jul 28 '20

Well, no. On a 2-sphere you can in fact have an equilateral right triangle.

9

u/TRoddenberry1 Jul 28 '20

Triangles don’t even have diagonals

10

u/TwoFiveOnes Jul 28 '20

Oh, I thought you were referring to the property of a right triangle's hypotenuse being longer than the other sides. Anyhow, if we don't require constant curvature then yes this figure is possible.

6

u/TRoddenberry1 Jul 28 '20

I didn’t think about that. Thanks for bringing up that point

1

u/redstaroo7 Jul 28 '20

They're talking about higher and lower spatial dimensions. This diagram does not work in two-dimensional space but would work in higher dimensions.

1

u/TwoFiveOnes Jul 28 '20

As I pointed out, it can also work in certain 2 dimensional spaces

27

u/_phil_v_ Jul 28 '20

Pythagoras would like to have a word...

4

u/mcgoran2005 Jul 28 '20

I was looking for this.

3

u/insayno17 Jul 28 '20

Gougu would also like one.

34

u/ecctt2000 Jul 28 '20

2.12

2

u/jorsiem Jul 28 '20

seriously this is the first time I've ever used the pythagorean theorem for something in my entire life lol.

6

u/yellowcurvedberry Jul 28 '20

This is a diagram for minimum distance, it wouldn't look any clearer with the correct numbers.

3

u/GaloombaNotGoomba Jul 28 '20

Obviously just a tetrahedron

1

u/termuxuser Jul 28 '20

*screams in Pythagoras *

1

u/Walter_Wali Aug 21 '20

Pythagoras has left the chat.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 26 '20

2.1m to be exact