Series

Wheel — the series

3 essays on one idea, from the one that introduces it to the one that assumes the rest.
  1. 5e-14°2.65°0.59°correct from 16 cm, at 160 mm wideaxle solid, minor axis dashed · 2.65° at the edge

    The minor axis is not the axle

    A wheel's perspective ellipse is supposed to have its short axis along the axle, and it does — on the principal ray, to 5e-14 degrees, and nowhere else. Off it the two part by 5.95 degrees on an ordinary frame while the drawn curves stay 0.98 px apart. A sphere obeys a rule of exactly the same shape and obeys it everywhere, which is why nobody caught the difference.

    part 4 · wrong
  2. correct from 16 cm, at 160 mm wide35 px from the major axis

    A cylinder has two different ends

    The two end circles of a cylinder image as two different ellipses — 14.4° apart in the direction of their major axes and 0.918 against 0.839 in aspect — and the outline's straight sides touch neither of them where its major axis ends, missing by 28° round the ellipse and 35 pixels. Walking the cylinder away removes the difference between the ends and does not remove the offset of the touch, which settles at 7.3° off the principal ray and at nothing on it.

    part 5 · wrong
  3. the axis's vanishing pointthe photographtaper 1° per side · drawn at 0.72×4.2 px missed by the habit

    A tapered part meets at its apex

    The sides of a turned part that narrows by one degree meet 54 pixels from the vanishing point of its axis, at the image of its apex, and a quarter of a degree already moves them 15. Drawn toward the vanishing point instead, a two-degree part loses nine tenths of its own taper. Flare it the other way by 5.9 degrees and a correct photograph prints its sides parallel; flare it further and they spread with depth.

    part 6 · wrong

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