Wednesday, April 26, 2023

wordy wednesday... hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon {april 26, 2023}

Hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon...whew! That's a long one.

An Atlas Obscura article, "Colorado Is Not a Rectangle - It Has 697 Sides," was the source of this enlightenment.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/is-colorado-a-rectangle?utm_source=pocket_discover

In a nutshell, there are only three states whose borders are entirely made up of straight lines: Utah, which would have been a rectangle if Wyoming hadn’t taken a chunk out of its northeastern corner; Wyoming and Colorado. But they aren't, for two distinct reasons: the earth is round and those 19th-century surveyors laying out state borders made mistakes.

Come to find out, Colorado doesn't have four sides, but 697 sides. So if Colorado is not a rectangle, what is it? Reaching back to all those Greek roots learned so long ago: Not a pentagon, (Greek for 5-sider), not a hexagon (6-sider), nor a heptagon (7-sider), so here it goes. 

Put all those roots together and you come up with hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon, a 697-sider.


1 comment:

  1. I remember the country roads running north and south, every ten miles or so, there was a curve, a correction for the curvature of the earth.

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