Douglas Koller wrote:
> <snippage>
>
> Simple question that this thread has raised for me: Some quick math
> shows that 7 and 11 into 360 produce repeating decimals. Does this mean
> there's no such thing as an equilateral heptagon or (whatever the word
> for an eleven-sided object is - undecagon?)? Or if there are, how does
> that work? Seven equal angles of ______
> 51.428571 degrees?
>
Of course there are regular heptagons and regular 11-sided polygons.
It's only an artifact of the combination of how we choose to measure
degrees (i.e. assigning 360 degrees to a full circle) and how we choose
to represent numbers (i.e. a base 10 counting system). Given these two
measuring/counting systems, 7/360 and 11/360 are *represented* as
repeating decimal numbers. That makes no constraint at all on their
actual spatial configuration.
Laurie
milo@winternet.com