On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 15:39 +0100, Anne Wilson wrote: > On Thursday 05 June 2008 15:14, Steve Searle wrote: > > Around 03:08pm on Thursday, June 05, 2008 (UK time), Anne Wilson scrawled: > > > That's less stable than 3, though :-) > > > > No, if you saw apropriate amounts off each of the legs it will be > > stable. > > > Ever tried doing that? :-) No - 3-legged stools were invented for stability > on uneven ground, essential in the meadow :-) Depends what you mean by stability. If you mean "not prone to rocking" then 3 is better in the sense of "easier to do". If you mean "less likely to tip over" then 4 is better (4 legs in a square arrangement can be seen as several overlapping sets of 3 legs). I'm assuming regular polygons with coplanar endpoints in each case of course. Somewhat OT, but there's a proof that a 4-legged table (under the above conditions) can always be placed in a stable -- i.e. non-rocking -- position on an irregular (but non-stepped) surface by rotating it about its vertical axis. See for example http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_02_07.html poc -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
