Aren’t plastic soda straws extruded? If so they went straight from liquid to straw shaped. Paper straws were rolled onto mandrels.
GaryM
I thought I had answered this but I must have got distracted and forgot.
The answer is that it’s a semantic quibble that tries to play off the fact that there are different definitions of a “hole”, viz., (1) an excavation in the earth, and (2) an opening through some object. In your example there are two holes per definition #1 until they meet, whereupon they also become one hole per the more general definition #2.
No one has yet addressed my question of how many holes in a donut. When we speak of a “donut hole”, are we talking about just one of two holes? If someone talks about a two-holed donut, do we imagine this to be an accurate description of an ordinary donut, or do we imagine a piece of baked dough with two holes in it, like eyes? The topology of a straw is the same as that of a donut.
If your going that way, it would have to be three.
This is in response to Fear Itself on page one. OOps
One of those is my ass. I will let you know when I figure out which is which.
Medicare Part D?
Not sure about that, but I know a three-hole donut is a pretzel.
Doesn’t matter. Plastic and paper straws are geometrically identical, regardless of the method of construction.
Yes, I realize they are identical after they are made, but the point was that plastic straws are not, or may not, be made by rolling a flat object.
It would be trivially easy to make plastic straws by winding them off a mandrel. But it is enormously more cost-effective to just extrude a tube – some plastic bags are made by extruding hot material out of a circular die.
For the drilling example, that’s two holes that combine and then become one hole. A straw has one hole, though we may colloquially treat hole as synonymous with opening.
They are not digging holes, they are creating depressions. When they meet in the middle, they become one hole.
Unless they are referring to the convenient handle they are holding onto.
Still creating a hole. You have a cylinder in the mandrel. Then you wrap the cylinder, making a thicker cylinder.
Then you remove the middle of the cylinder, creating a hole.
It should, though. Otherwise you wind up with discussions where people think that three is three times more than one.
Also, a straw IS one hole. A portable hole with very thin walls.
No, a straw is not a portable hole