27 Feb
2007
27 Feb
'07
7:14 p.m.
On 2/27/07, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
After doing some plotting with Maxima/gnuplot on some ovals produced from parabolae, I concluded that the ovals produced by parabolae from isosceles triangles were a little bumpy for my taste.
The parabolic top lobe looks pretty good, but the two bottom lobes are too pointy.
Not too surprising, perhap, when you have only first-order continuity --- c.f. also original "Moss" oval.
There appear to be no degrees of freedom to adjust things.
Of course, this might be considered an advantage --- if only it looked right! But it seems that any model that produces a satisfactory egg-shapes needs at least three shape (modulo similarity) degrees of freedom --- three more than the ideal! WFL