{"id":14238,"date":"2004-04-06T11:03:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-06T11:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/2004\/04\/06\/square-wheeled-bike\/"},"modified":"2004-04-06T11:03:00","modified_gmt":"2004-04-06T11:03:00","slug":"square-wheeled-bike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/2004\/04\/06\/square-wheeled-bike\/","title":{"rendered":"Square-Wheeled Bike?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/articles\/20040403\/mathtrek.asp\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" align=\"right\" alt=\"Square-wheeled bike\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blogicons\/squarewheeledbike.jpg\" \/><\/a>Does anything seem wrong with the picture at right?  Although seemingly impossible, the combination of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/articles\/20040403\/mathtrek.asp\" target=\"_blank\">square wheels riding on a roadway comprised of &ldquo;inverted catenaries&rdquo; results in a perfectly smooth ride<\/a>.  In fact, for almost any shape, a corresponding surface can be designed to produce a smooth ride:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As the number of a polygon&rsquo;s sides increases, these catenary segments get shorter and flatter. Ultimately, for an infinite number of sides (in effect, a circle), the curve becomes a straight, horizontal line.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, what are the benefits of this epiphany?  None that I can see, but it is pretty interesting&hellip;<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div class=\"byline\">via <a href=\"http:\/\/slashdot.org\/article.pl?sid=04\/04\/05\/147221&amp;mode=thread&amp;tid=134&amp;tid=146&amp;tid=99\" target=\"_blank\">Slashdot<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/3501955-108124942632007017?l=www.driko.org%2Findex_blogger.html\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Does anything seem wrong with the picture at right? Although seemingly impossible, the combination of square wheels riding on a roadway comprised of &ldquo;inverted catenaries&rdquo; results in a perfectly smooth ride. In fact, for almost any shape, a corresponding surface can be designed to produce a smooth ride: As the number of a polygon&rsquo;s sides &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/2004\/04\/06\/square-wheeled-bike\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Square-Wheeled Bike?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[118],"class_list":["post-14238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-imported"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}