Another debate over a seemingly pointless question has come up on the internet: are there more wheels or doors in the world? This question originated from Twitter, where Ryan Nixon tweeted a poll on Mar. 4, 2022, asking this exact question. Since then, it has been debated on both TikTok and Twitter, with both sides having many supporters.
After seeing so many of these TikToks, I decided to create a poll at Pace. With 74 responses, 18 people responded doors, while the other 56 people responded wheels. It’s clear, Pace is overwhelmingly team wheels with a ratio of a little over three wheels supporters for every door supporter, though this is much more of a drastic difference compared to the original Twitter poll. Those supporting wheels often stated very similar arguments to one another. “Lego manufacturers, factories, spinning chairs, scooters, bikes, semi-trucks. The answer is clear,” said Senior John Catherman. “There are wheels on literally everything,” said Junior Kate Webb, “Imagine all the shopping carts and vehicles and gears to make things work.” “Even some doors have wheels. No wheels have doors,” said Director of ICGL Trish Anderson.
Although these are solid reasons for believing there are more wheels, all of these arguments are flat-out wrong. “There are more doors because there are doors in every house, four on every car,” said Sophomore Mac Barnette. “The argument that it is very common for furniture to have wheels, so there are more wheels, is false.” Most pieces of furniture have more doors than wheels. Think of all the cabinet doors, desks, chests, etc. Also, in nature, doors are much more common than wheels. “There are coral with tons of doors,” said Freshman Zoe Albert. Barnacles are extremely common on almost every port, coast, harbor, etc., and each barnacle has many doors. If we are counting barnacles as doors, then we also count clams, oysters and scallops to have doors. The final nail in the coffin is that “there is a door in every human cell,” said Sophomore William Souza. Cells can open and close their cell membrane, and therefore it counts as a door. There are about 37.2 trillion cells in every human, and there are more than 7.9 billion humans living today. Therefore, there are innumerably more doors than wheels, and it isn’t even a comparison.
My answer could be considered a cop-out, however, and the definitive answer depends heavily on how you define doors and wheels. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a door as “a usually swinging or sliding barrier by which an entry is closed and opened.” However, Oxford Languages defines a door as “a hinged, sliding, or revolving barrier at the entrance to a building, room, or vehicle, or in the framework of a cupboard.” In the first definition, cells, clams, oysters, etc. all count as doors because they have a closable entry. According to Oxford Languages, cells, clams, oysters, etc. cannot be considered doors because they don’t lead to a room. In a similar way, wheels also have a subtle difference in definition. Merriam Webster defines a wheel as “a circular frame of hard material that may be solid, partly solid or spoked and that is capable of turning on an axle.” However, Oxford Languages defines a wheel as “a circular object that revolves on an axle and is fixed below a vehicle or other object to enable it to move easily over the ground.” In Merriam Webster’s definition, gears and pulleys are counted, however, they aren’t in the second one because they aren’t necessarily below another object nor does it have the goal of moving it more easily over the ground.
In the end, the answer to this question doesn’t matter at all, and there’s no point in getting heated over a dumb internet argument. Just “don’t be obtuse,” said Junior Forest Pollard.