re: How many holes does a straw have?

One long one.

Look down one end and what do you see?

Supposed you dig a hole in the ground, a few feet deep. You have a hole. Now keep digging, now it's 20 feet...still just a hole. Now let's say you kept digging all the way through to the other side of the earth to where you could see straight through...it's still the same hole it's just a really long one. So my answer tends to be 1.


But what really trips me up though is the physical composition of a straw. Envision a straw as just one piece of rectangular plastic folded up to make a cylinder. You have 1 hole now at each end, 2 holes.

So I don't know.

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Actually it depends on how the donut is constructed. If you start with a cylinder of dough, then wrap it to make both ends meet, then there is no hole, BUT if you take a piece of dough, flatten it out, then punch the middle out, you most definitely are left with a hole!

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How many holes does a straw have?
One or two?

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Probably have to give some better definitions and context to get an answer... anything else will have to be qualified.

5/5 Topologists will tell you it has one hole... for reasons already laid out in this thread... essentially it's an extended ring torus, which has a single hole.

So in a topological context, one is a correct answer.

To play devils advocate, however, see previous poster who talked about "digging a hole"... now we get into the common usage of the term hole... since topologically, this would not be considered a hole up until the point where you have reached the other side. Until then, it is an indent in the surface of the solid object (Earth). Or we can think about drilling holes... I use a drill to create "holes", but what if I am drilling into a solid object that is longer than the drill bit that I have... again... is this a hole, or is this an indent (topologically, again it's an indent).

Now... let's flip that on it's head. If I have a tennis ball and I use a lengthy drill bit to puncture it on one side, I have drilled a "hole" in the hollow sphere, since gas is now able to escape. If I then complete the path to the other side, have I created one hole or two? This one is more curious for me, and more analogous to the straw, since the straw is a hollow cylinder and the tennis ball is a hollow sphere...

Any who... have fun kiddos back to work for a bit maybe...

Fun times...

Per Websters: Hole - an opening through something.

Per Oxford: Hole - A hollow place in a solid body or surface.

Based on both of these definitions, the answer is 1.