Spherical Triangle Sequence

Index Entry

Spherical Triangle Sequence:

"your spherical trigonometry.

""Now if I made another triangle bigger still, in which the

90° corners were 120° angles . . . that's exactly what you

get with a spherical tetrahedron. If I put a tetrahedron

inside of a sphere with the light I had last night, and have

the shadows cast outwardly from the light at the center of

the sphere, it would show you this 120 degree interaction

at four vertexes. So there would be a triangle where each

of the corners would be 120° and it would add up to 360°.

Now I'll simply say to you then, that when you draw a

triangle on our Earth, even though it's very local-- and you

draw a little tiny triangle here locally-- you divide the

total surface of the Earth into two areas. And one is a very

large triangle with corners of about 300° each, and there are

these little local ones of about 60° each if you try to make

it equilateral. The boy said, 'But I didn't mean to draw the

big triangle.' I said, 'That's just the trouble. We keep

drawing these big triangles and don't realize we are,' We've

been thinking what's been called realistic. Let's get down

to Earth, never mind that space stuff, but when we're all the

time just a tiny little speck in space. It's nothing but a

space program, which we'd better catch on to pretty quickly."

C16698