This reminds me of a question I'd love to have a quick answer to. There are lots of arches in architecture, and I was wondering if there was a quick way to tell which mathematical shape the arch was. For example, the arch in St. Louis is supposed to be a catenary (cosh upside down, also chain upside down); arches on bridges are supposed to be parabolae; many Roman arches are circular; some windows are elliptical. Does anyone know what shape McDonald's arches are supposed to be? At 03:48 PM 12/20/2006, Jason Holt wrote:
I was working on my table saw today, using a taper jig to cut wedges out of a dowel for a bed I'm building, and I had some leftovers:
http://lunkwill.org/pics/conic/0thumbs.html
They're actully kind of pretty. I'm going to keep one on my desk at work and see who notices.