Geometry

From: Andrew Barton <100010.533_at_CompuServe.COM>
Date: 07 May 97 09:54:31 EDT


Owen Jones got his geometries slightly mixed:  

>> Gloranthan compasses - You actually need three different compasses to >> pin your location exactly, two will tell you that you are somewhere on  

> Not in any geometry I'm familiar with, Euclidean or otherwise. Not even if
> you were willing to abandon the concept of the line as the shortest
> distance between two points. One of the fundamental axioms of any geometry
> is that two (different) straight lines meet at most once.
 

On the surface of the real world spherical geometry applies, a 'straight line' is a great circle, and great circles meet -twice-.  

Andrew      


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