¶ Geodesics (2)
Index Entry
Geodesics:
"More geodesics–the top leaves of fast-growing vines reach toward the Sun as the Earth revolves, leaving them reaching westward and outward at evening sunclipse. In the morning, the Sun is to the eastward and the vine circles its top leaves to reach eastward; thus the spiraling vine’s leaves are always nearer to the Sun than are the vine’s roots.
“But Einstein spoke only of geodesic lines–because the great circles of a sphere provide the shortest distances between any two points on the surface of a sphere, they are called geodesic lines. Superimpose a circle of the radius of 80° north latitude upon the equator of a 12-inch Earth globe, which equator is a geodesic line. The latitude circle which is not a geodesic but a lesser circle, crosses the equator at two points, A and B, and it is quickly manifest that it is a shorter distance between A and B along the equator than it is along the circular distance of the small circle. Because I structured my spherical structures entirely with triangles consisting entirely of chords of those great circles, they were structured in the most economical awareness for that form, and therefore did not want to transform into any other shape. I called the structures 'geodesics–and the art and science of dealing with geodesic lines as ‘GEODESICS.’”
