At work we somehow landed on the topic of how many holes a human has, which then evolved into a heated discussion on the classic question of how many holes does a straw have.
I think it’s two, but some people are convinced that it’s one, which I just don’t understand. What are your thoughts?
I was also thinking zero. I picture a straw as a rectangular piece of material that’s been curled to form a cylinder, and in my mind that rectangle has no holes in it. I was confused when I saw that the options were only one or two.
As far as 2D topology is concerned the number of holes increase when you glue the edges of the rectangle together.
Though in that case you’re basically counting how many boundaries the surface has, which for a straw is 2 distinct circles.