Same - I get the gist, but "how many lines lie on a cubic face" doesn't make sense as a question to me, what is a "line" in this context? I struggle to understand the issue as my only understanding is that the face is divided by line width which determines how many lines, but that's nonsensical and non interesting.
As an aside (again, as a layperson) I've had this feeling with most Quanta articles, it's interesting and I feel like I get the gist but that's all. Kinda like it's both too simplified and touching on too deep concepts to tie together the article.
Sorry for the rambling.
Edit0: how many straight lines going through the whole length of the face it is on on a cubic surface. Honestly, I just hadn't really pictured a cubic surface to start with - that was the main part. Had that picture been higher up I think I would have liked the article right away! Thank you peeps
There’s a picture at the bottom. I think the text there is a bit more clear (maybe?): you have a cubic surface and want to see if there’s any “straight line” that lives/lies on the surface. It turns out there’s 27 lol.
As an aside (again, as a layperson) I've had this feeling with most Quanta articles, it's interesting and I feel like I get the gist but that's all. Kinda like it's both too simplified and touching on too deep concepts to tie together the article.
Sorry for the rambling.
Edit0: how many straight lines going through the whole length of the face it is on on a cubic surface. Honestly, I just hadn't really pictured a cubic surface to start with - that was the main part. Had that picture been higher up I think I would have liked the article right away! Thank you peeps