That's hair splitting. So human surveying errors caused Colorado to have a jagged border which appears straight from a distance. For practical purposes it can be drawn as a rectangle on maps, just like you don't need to account for the position of every grain of sand on the beach when measuring coasts.
2ndOfficerCHL t1_j3avxzm wrote
Reply to comment by sckego in TIL Colorado is actually a hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon, meaning it has 697 sides. by Dearfield
That's hair splitting. So human surveying errors caused Colorado to have a jagged border which appears straight from a distance. For practical purposes it can be drawn as a rectangle on maps, just like you don't need to account for the position of every grain of sand on the beach when measuring coasts.