this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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I doubt very many science teachers would have said that
I've had multiple teachers, including at least one science teacher, say nature doesn't do straight lines.
It was just as baffling then as it is now. Especially since I've always had a fascination with pyrite.
Doesn't quartz also do straight lines pretty much always?
Based on the two large mostly clear crystals from different parts of the world I'm (figuratively) holding, "yes" would be my answer. Although most quartz I come across in the wild is the cloudy chunky kind.
Selenite has a very straight crystal structure. It can even splinter.
Every crystal or crystal like structure does straight lines, no?
Diamond looks to be pretty jagged/rough, but I guess even it does have some straight lines on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_cubic
Yes, though it it a bit funky.
Snow is just straight lines
Quartz has an octagonal crystal structure, which is the only thing distinguishing it from regular glass. Both are silicon dioxide.
If you melt quartz and let it cool, it will just be regular glass with an amorphous crystal structure. Conversely, if you melt glass and mix in some ground quartz, it will crystalize around the pattern and become quartz.
Even snowflakes are all straight lines! I remember seeing close-up images of them in the science magazines we had in school.
Crystalline structure in general is basically all straight lines and angles
Biology/organic chemistry don't tend to do straight lines. Inorganic chemistry fucking loves order and straight lines.
My first year teaching, they hired a physical education teacher to teach physical science. About one month in, they also “emergency certified” a secretary so they could get our class sizes below the thirties.
States like Oklahoma and Louisiana are working on taking away the requirements that teachers even have a bachelors degree.
I knew a biology teacher who was a creationist and actively told students that the COVID vaccine was dangerous. And he of course got the Department Head job, because I was a queer.
You'd be surprised how few competent teachers are left
It's actually true. Right angles are a theoretical construct, that don't occur in nature. There is always some degree of variance baked into reality that violate theoretical absolutes.
It's actually false. I know this because I passed physical chemistry.
So, when you measure a right angle in physical chemistry, you get exactly 90 deg with zero decimal points? That's amazing.
And also impossible. There's always a variance.
You need to learn yourself some molecular geometry. An octahedral molecule forms a perfect right angle due to its bonds. Sulfur Hexafloride (SF~6~) is one of those molecules. So yes, nature makes perfect right angles.
I don't mean to contradict you because I'm on your side here, but do you mean a hexahedral molecule? Cubes have six faces. An octahedron looks like two pyramids placed base-to-base
It’s a bit counterintuitive to me too.
Oh, I see. The atoms are representing the vertices, of which the octahedron has 6. (Oddly enough, the hexahedron has 8 vertices...)
That makes a lot more sense. For some reason I was thinking in terms of faces, but that wouldn't make much sense molecularly...
Are we talking "in a lab", or "in nature". Because I may not have studied molecular geometry, but I know a lot about metallurgy. And "in nature", every compound contains impurities.
This distinction is meaningless for the purpose of this conversation
They said octahedral molecules, those are common enough that I think you find several kinds of them in mineral water.
Compounds are not molecules
You are a special breed of pedantic. This is pedantic to the point of questioning if you have any actual intelligence or just a few smatterings of pedantic knowledge.
The other thing I was thinking is that a swinging object (vine, what have you) will, even for the briefest, infinitesimal moment, form a perfect 90 degree angle to the tree branch.
A quare is defined as having four right angles. By your definition of right angle, you've never drawn a square in your life.
Stop being a pedant and admit that you learned something today.
I've never drawn a "perfect" square...and neither has anyone else. There will always be some deviation from a perfect 90 degree angle, except in theory. Even if that deviation is infinitesimally small, it still exists when an angle is measured accurately.
You are the one who brought up “perfect”. That’s not even the claim in the OP, so I’m not clear what point you even think you are making.
That's what defines a right angle. When one line stands against another line, so that the angles on either side of the first line are equal, or "right" to each other. In mathematical terms those angles would have to both be exactly 90 degrees in order to be "equal". Even the slightest difference between them, and they are not considered "right" angles anymore.
This is why the meme above says, "My science teacher: right angles don't exist in nature". Because no naturally occurring structures are exactly 90 degrees. Ever. There is always some tiny variance that breaks that theoretical requirement.
The person I responded to said, "I doubt very many science teachers would have said that", but they do. At least at more advanced levels. It's a common teaching parable that opens the conversation about the inherent "fuzziness" of reality. Even the most accurate measurements will always have a certain amount of baked-in uncertainty.
Reality itself is messy. There are no true right angles. No perfectly parallel lines. No truly flat surfaces. The best you can ever do is get ridiculously close.
Hi, you sound dumb to people who know what they're actually talking about and also to people with no idea. That's fun an impressive but it's in no way useful.
So, no one here has ever read Euclid's Elements?
Wow. Ok.
Bruh that's not how any of this works.
First off, if there's always variance, then logically by random chance sometimes you must measure exactly 90°.
Second of all, how many decimal points are you measuring too? 1? 2? 10^-23? The likelihood of measuring exactly 90° definitely goes down the more places you measure to, but A: precision is only useful up to a certain point, and B: it is never 0%.
Sure when you set the goal post that far away you're right but by doing that you've made your argument so pedantic that it's just not worth arguing against. In practice at some point the variance is so insignificant and we can just say it's a right angle. If you want to maintain the position that it's not a perfect right angle by all means you're welcome to do that. I'd say, that piece of bismuth is close enough.
I mean, at an atomic level, could a Pythagorean triple not make a right triangle?
"In theory", if one of those angles equals exactly 90 deg. But "in reality", nothing will ever truly measure exactly 90 deg. Best you're going to get is 90.0000-something. Reality doesn't work in absolutes...only approximates. Some are more accurate than others, but none are perfect.
Reminds me of that Rick and Morty episode with the perfectly level floor. At a certain point in reality you also would need perfect tools to check if something is perfect. Measuring the stick so to speak. I believe it is theoretically possible to get perfect angles, but keeping it that way might be a challenge outside of a vacuum. As a thought experiment, if you take your arm, hold it straight, then bend it, for 1 picosecond or something, wouldn't the angle of your arm be exactly 180.000~°, 90.000~°, etc, as it is bending?
If a triangle oscillates from having an angle greater than 90 deg to less than 90 deg, there has to be a moment where it equaled exactly 90 per the hairy ball theorem
Oh but you see (you fool!) you used the word theorem, ergo, by your own admission, this only works in theory! Hoisted by your own petard! - Archangel1313, probably
Seriously. I feel like this comment section is filled with people who have only ever measured things using a graphics model.
"Hur-dur! My simulation is always 90 degrees."
💀 lmao