ABSTRACT
Design on a grid Students often raise their eyebrows – and their hands – when we show them how to generate proportional objects using a compass and a straight-edge. ey ask us, ‘Can’t you just do this on the computer?’ In fact, diagonal lines often give rise to irrational numbers – something that computers do only approximately. e reason for this limit is structural. e logic of the computer – its language and its method of visualization – has as its framework rational numbers and the rational grid.
