Merriam Webster's defines a hole as "an opening through something." Since a straw is simply a thin sheet of plastic or paper with it's sides drawn around to meet each other, the opening is not really through the object, but rather a void where there is no object. This void could as easily be seen as being on the outside of the straw as on the inside. A straw, then, has precisely NO holes.
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· 5 years ago
What if the straw was a solid cylinder, and then we bore a hole through it? It would essentially be a straw (assume it looks and functions exactly as a straw would). Would the action of that then define the straw of having a “hole”? If we assume this is true, then I would consider a straw to have one hole.
Topologically it is the same surface as a torus/donut
So as donuts only have the one hole that’s the answer
And the answer is not zero holes because the space of the torus/straw is not simply connected
What? A cylinder and a torus are not topologically equivalent. To my knowledge, they don't even have the same chromatic number.
OP's answer of "technically, zero" still seems great.
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· 5 years ago
What about my question (refer to above). Is circumstance of how the “straw” is made this only thing that determines if it’s a hole or not?
Since when is a straw a cylinder it’s got that hole in it. Cylinders are solid throughout, or at least st the ends, which differentiates it from a torus. To explain: take a torus, designate an up and down, then align the hole of the torus along the up/down dierection so you can go from up to down through the hole, then stretch the torus out along the up/down line so the hole doesn’t move. Now you’ve got a big straw with thick walls. Fortunately we can just thin the walls out until we’re satisi and presto a straw
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· 5 years ago
That’s exactly what I mean. So it would be one hole at this point.
So as donuts only have the one hole that’s the answer
And the answer is not zero holes because the space of the torus/straw is not simply connected
OP's answer of "technically, zero" still seems great.
Unfortunately it has been mathematically proven that a straw has one hole.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinknudson/2018/01/29/drinking-straws-how-many-holes/