Random Word of The Day- Sphere!
I love words- not just as a writer but as a piece of history. After all, how would we record our best (or worse) moments without words? A particularly fascinating bit of information for me is how a word came to be; where it originated, what’s it made up of- things like that. So I figured why not write about it? Using a random word generator I decided to try to find the roots of whatever word it spat out. Today, it is “sphere”!
A sphere put simply, is a circle made 3 dimensional. If not put simply, it is always symmetrical (otherwise is an ovoid), with a constant width, circumference, and curvature. All points on the surface are equidistant from the center and the volume of one can be calculated with the formula
A=4 x pi x r²
Apparently, the surface area can be calculated with the same thing. But back to the word. It seemingly comes from the greek word for ball, sphaira. By Middle English times, it had reached its current form. Although it has gone through many other forms by then- Sphera and Sphaera both from Late Latin, and Espere from Old French, the current word has a nice ring to it, does it not? In my humble opinion, all the previous forms sounded much nicer. That’s neither here nor there. Sphere is commonly used to refer to its greek namesake- a ball. Although most balls aren’t perfectly round, when people think of a sphere they think of an ultra-round ball.
So what do balls do? It depends how who you ask! They are used for playing sports, science, and if you ask a group of very misinformed children, for storing pee (Although those balls are definitely ovoids- nicknamed huevos for a reason). Think of all the round objects you like… all of those could likely be called spheres.
So, I’ve written a lot of things about spheres- now it’s time for a killer closer. Where can you find a pretty close-to-perfect sphere? There are many options but here are my personal favorites- bubbles. Bubbles are indeed a natural wonder; they float, they appear in weird places like sand, and if you dip an item (including hands) in soap bubble solution you can reach through, touch, and even pull the bubble film. I’m done for today, but tune back in soon for more words!
As per usual, I proofread by myself- please excuse any mistakes
