Well if you made a penguin into an approximate cylinder it would likely be oval shaped soo since we are talking approximations I would say yes, there are cylinder like shapes that are not circular
under an appropriate level of abstraction you can make lots of types of cylinders. in topology you can define a cylinder of a (topological space) X to just be X × [0,1]. this kind of definition comes up pretty frequently, and is used to create mapping cylinders, which i suppose are another type of cylinder.
the “normal” kind of cylinder is then just (circle) × [0,1], or (filled in circle) × [0,1], depending on whether you want it to look like an empty paper towel roll or a (full) can of beans
Are there non circular cylinders? Isn’t a cylinder by definition circular?
Well if you made a penguin into an approximate cylinder it would likely be oval shaped soo since we are talking approximations I would say yes, there are cylinder like shapes that are not circular
under an appropriate level of abstraction you can make lots of types of cylinders. in topology you can define a cylinder of a (topological space) X to just be X × [0,1]. this kind of definition comes up pretty frequently, and is used to create mapping cylinders, which i suppose are another type of cylinder.
the “normal” kind of cylinder is then just (circle) × [0,1], or (filled in circle) × [0,1], depending on whether you want it to look like an empty paper towel roll or a (full) can of beans
I’ll just trust you on that, I suppose