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Niteshifter 03-18-2010 10:33 PM

Trigonometry problems
 
My assignment is basically to make a person scale a pyramid using the Pythagorean theorem, which for me is very easy and my teacher knows that I can do this stuff in about 5 min, so we're (me and my teacher) are both challenging ourselves to find a way so that the angle at which the person scales the pyramid is accurate (since the book just says to have the person turn forward 1/8 of a revolution).

I've gotten it partially finished, however I'm stuck at a spot. I've created a function that will return how far the person will turn using trigonometric methods. This is what I have so far (it's put into simple steps so that it's easy to follow):

Var is a number value
Py is the pyramid

Var = arctan(py.height/(py.width/2))
Var = 90 - Var
Var = Var/360
Return Var

What this does is return the degrees at which is between the edge of the bounding box and the slope of the pyramid, which is approx. 24.7°. Now the problem I'm having is translating this to how far the person will turn forward because if I put that in as it is, the person will turn forward a whole 90°.

rankhornjp 03-19-2010 10:03 AM

If 1 is a complete revolution. Couldn't you divide 1 by 360 (1/360)=.00277 then multiply that by the degrees? .00277*24.7=.068419 revolutions

.00277*90=.2493 (almost quarter turn)
.00277*180=.4986 (half turn)
.00277*270=.7479 (3/4 turn)
.00277*360=.9972(full turn)

Its not exact, but its pretty close.

Niteshifter 03-19-2010 02:00 PM

Tried it, and it was pretty close, but there was a huge space in between once he reached the top. I also tried doing (0.247 - 0.068), which was still quite off.

The answer should be about (1/9.75). Got the number from literally trial and error.

Niteshifter 03-19-2010 03:00 PM

Nevermind, the orientation and shape of the pyramid isn't an exact triangular shape, so it's going to be off on various places regardless of where it is.


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