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axel		 Does a circle actually have sides?? View All
Now I am no scholar Im really only in middle school still, but I have a love of science and all the stuff involving it. But I was thinking about science like I always do and asked my self if a circle had sides? My reasons for asking this are because if you could cut out a perfect circle and roll it on a table, wouldnt more than one atom be touching the table, there for creating a flat side. I know this may be a stupid question, but I must know. Thank you very much in advance.
15 years ago - 1 day left to answer. - 3 responses - Report Abuse
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Niel
 Axel:

Mathematically a circle does not have any sides. It has a single curved line. For it to have sides those surfaces must really be straight. Alternate it can be viewed as having an infinite number of sides of length approaching zero.

As you noted when you cut a circle out of paper or other real material it must have sides. Even if the length of those sides are the size of atoms or molecules.

When you start to talk about what happens at the molecular or atomic level remember that there is really a lot of space between atoms. Also atoms move and are not perfectly rigid, but that gets into another discussion.

Niel

15 years ago

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Elijah
 thank you for asking this question, iv wondered this for such a long time. from what i can conclude from my knowledge, a circle does actually have sides. in a perfect, theoretical world a circle is perfectly round but of course our world is not either of those. for all practical applications circles so have sides, just smaller and smaller sides depending on how precise the model is. hope iv helped =)

15 years ago

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biomroy
 it has infinite amount of sides.

15 years ago

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