3D geometry

DaveC426913

Ah. Right. It's root 3. I did cube root.


That's excellent. That means all my work to make 3X telescoping rods is not necessary.

DaveC426913

OK, I've built a static prototype out of wooden skewers and hot glue.

With X=2.2" in my prototype, I measure Y= at 4.7". That's accounting for the non-zero diameter of the sticks.

So my empirical ratio is 2.14.

haruspex wins! (And honourable mention to chiro for his derivation.)


And that means that the device can be constructed using 24 identical rods that can telescope by a factor of at least 2.15. That's way better than the 3+ I had originally calculated! (Do you know how difficult it is to construct a rod that can telescope to 3x its own length?)