¶ Spherical Triangle Sequence
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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."
