Level 3: Ellipse with 2 Points
Let's try something different—an ellipse. You'll notice similar results again, but notice how the ellipse handles the proportionality. A point with a linear constraint may not appear to move at a constant rate around the ellipse, as it would on a line or circle. Think of the ellipse as a tilted circle; the point will appear to move faster on the longer parts of the curve and slower at the shorter parts. In 3D, this is explained by the fact that the point is moving deeper away from you, so a 2D cross-section of its position will be moving relatively less than the actual object.
You may have noticed that the last couple of challenges have not included any quantitative means to determine the proportionality functions. That's because the trick to these problems is to learn how to visually judge the relative proportionalities of the points. As a guideline, every problem in the app will contain a point that is constrained at, simply t.
| t | ||||
| 0 | 0 | 6.2831853 | ||