"Ronn!Blankenship" wrote: > > At 12:02 AM 4/6/04, The Fool wrote: > ><<http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040403/mathtrek.asp>> > > > >Riding on Square Wheels > >Ivars Peterson > > > >A square wheel may be the ultimate flat tire. There's no way it can roll > >over a flat, smooth road without a sequence of jarring bumps. > > > >Stan Wagon, a mathematician at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., has > >a bicycle with square wheels. It's a weird contraption, but he can ride > >it perfectly smoothly. His secret is the shape of the road over which the > >wheels roll. > > > > > > > > > >Stan Wagon rides his square-wheeled trike over a special roadway. > >Courtesy of Stan Wagon > > > > > > > > > >A square wheel can roll smoothly, keeping the axle moving in a straight > >line and at a constant velocity, if it travels over evenly spaced bumps > >of just the right shape. This special shape is called an inverted > >catenary. > > Interesting. And maybe useful in some specific cases. But it would > probably be quite expensive to build millions of miles of roads with > inverted catenary-shaped bumps and to maintain them in that figure, to keep > debris, snow, ice, etc., from accumulating in the low points, etc., and > even if that was done, only one size of square wheel would work, regardless > if one were driving a small car or a motorcycle or a heavily-loaded > eighteen-wheeler. I think those difficulties would be enough to cosh the > whole idea. > > -- Ronn! :) >
No, but special purpose vehicles and/or robots designed to crawl over a row of pipes without damaging them would be a cool application. -- Matt _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
