A Torus and Its Dual, Part II

After I published the last post, which I did not originally intend to have two parts, this comment was left by one of my blog’s followers. My answer is also shown.

A torus can be viewed as a flexible rectangle rolled into a donut shape, and I had used 24 small rectangles by 24 small rectangles as the settings for Stella 4 for the torus, and its dual, in the last post — which, due to the nature of that program, are actually rendered as toroidal polyhedra. To investigate my new question, I increased 24×24 to 90×90, and these three images show the results. The first shows a 90×90 torus, the second shows its dual, and the third shows the compound of the two.

When I compare these images to those in the previous post, it is clear that these figures are approaching a limit as n, in the expression “nxn rectangle,” increases. What’s more, I recognize the dual now, of the true torus, at the limit, as n approaches infinity — it’s a cone. It’s not a finite-volume cone, but the infinite-volume cone one obtains by rotating a line around an axis which intersects that line. This figure, not a finite-volume cone, is the cone used to define the conic sections: the circle, ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola.

What’s more, I smell calculus afoot here. I do not yet know enough calculus.

“Learn a lot more about calculus” is definitely on my agenda for the coming Summer, for several reasons, not the least of which is that I plainly need it to make more headway in my understanding of geometry. 

[Note: Stella 4d, the program used to make these images, may be found at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.]