Main Page
Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 3185 xkcd comics, and only 54 (1.7%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!
Latest comic
| Inverted Catenaries |
 Title text: Some tires are marketed as 'all-shape tires,' but if driven in a climate with both inverted catenary falls and triangle falls, they wear out really fast. |
Explanation
During the winter, in snowy areas, people need to replace their typical, all-season tires with snow tires made specifically for the slick environment. In this comic, instead of snow, rounded shapes called inverted catenaries fall from the skies. On a plane covered in inverted catenaries all the same size, square wheels whose side length matches the arc length of the catenary are capable of rolling smoothly, contrary to how they would act on a normal road. Regular wheels would cause a significantly bumpier ride on this terrain, so Cueball plans to swap them out with square wheels to better suit the season.
Mathematicians have found what types of roads would suit weird wheels the most, and inverted catenary is best suited shape for the square. People make made real tracks demonstrating this.
The title text mentions all-shape tires (as a play on all-terrain tire), which is advertised to supposedly fit any shape road. However, different shapes would require very different wheels; for example, falling triangles would form a sawtooth road, for which one would optimally require wheels pasted together from pieces of an equiangular spiral. Any hypothetical all-shape wheel would wear out very quickly on most surfaces.
Transcript
View comic discussionNew here?
Last 7 days (Top 10) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to create an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for xkcd comics, characters, What If? articles, and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd comic, it should be here.
- If you're new to wiki editing, see the explain xkcd:Editor FAQ for a specific guidance to this wiki and the more general help on how to edit wiki pages. There's also a handy wikicode cheatsheet.
- Discussion about the wiki itself happens at the Community portal.
- You can browse the comics from the list of all comics or by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.
- The incomplete explanations are listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!
Rules
Don't be a jerk!
There are a lot of comics that don't have set-in-stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.
If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.
Please only submit material directly related to xkcd and, of course, only submit material that can legally be posted and freely edited. Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.
If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.
