eli5 why are most natural holes circles?
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What you want from a hole is area…you want to pass through something. You want maximum area for the most useful hole. But it takes energy to make a hole and energy is hard to come by…you want to expend as little of that to get as big a hole as you need. The energy to *make* a hole corresponds to how much you have to cut, which is basically the perimeter (length) of the edge of the hole.
So you want the maximum ratio of area to circumference. The shape that does that is…a circle. Any other hole shape takes more energy for the same area so anybody that tries that is at a disadvantage to any process that uses circles.
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