Why I Have Personal Beef with Euclid and the Z-Axis by Nandan Kamalakannan

 Why I Have Personal Beef with Euclid and the Z-Axis by Nandan Kamalakannan

For a long time, math and I had a mutual understanding. We had the X-axis going left to right,

and we had the Y-axis going up and down. It was a perfectly flat, perfectly reasonable two-

dimensional world. Triangles stayed in their lane, squares minded their own business, and

everything fit nicely onto a standard sheet of graph paper.

Then, someone decided to introduce the Z-axis, and my brain has been in a state of buffer-delay

ever since.If we are pointing fingers, we have to talk about Euclid. He is the ancient Greek mathematician

known as the "father of geometry." Listen, I deeply respect the man’s intelligence, but I also have

a personal grudge against him. Euclid was out there in 300 BC, wearing a toga, drawing in the

sand with a stick, and somehow conceptualizing three-dimensional planes intersecting in infinite

space. Meanwhile, I am sitting in a classroom with a graphing calculator, a ruler, and three

different colored highlighters, and I am still completely lost.

The main problem with 3D geometry is that it demands impossible mental gymnastics. Your

teacher will draw a slanted parallelogram on the whiteboard and casually say, "Now, imagine this

is a flat plane extending infinitely in all directions."

With all due respect, that is a crooked rectangle. My brain flat-out refuses to see the illusion.

Trying to visualize 3D planes intersecting on a flat, 2D piece of paper feels like staring at an

optical illusion until you go cross-eyed. Is this line going through the plane? Is it going behind

the plane? Wait, is this entire shape actually floating toward me? The longer I stare at the

diagram on my homework, the more the lines shift and warp until I’m questioning my own grip

on reality. It feels less like doing math and more like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube blindfolded.

And don’t even get me started on calculating the distance between two points in 3D space. It’s

like the Pythagorean theorem hit the gym, drank three energy drinks, and decided to make my

life unnecessarily complicated.

I know that understanding 3D geometry is essential for architecture, engineering, and creating

the video games I like to play, so I suppose we owe Euclid a massive "thank you." But if anyone

ever invents a time machine, I might just take a quick trip back to ancient Alexandria to gently

hide his drawing stick. Just for a week or two. Just so my brain can finally catch a break.