Drilling a Hexagonal Hole
 3. Get the bottom arc using a circle of radius  centered at (0,1). Let  be the point of intersection of the bottom arc and the hexagon.6. Use the intersection of the northwest and southwest arcs to define the upper termination of those arcs; the east side is similar. As  increases from 0 to  the entire roller is rotated clockwise through  and then translated leftward so as to place  on the hexagon. For the first 0.049 radians of this rotation there are only four points of contact: the upper and lower points guarantee that there is no up-down motion, and the two points on the southwest and southeast sides guarantee rigidity in the left-right direction. After this critical value of  there are five points of contact. As the rotation continues, symmetry governs the patterns and there are always four or five points of contact, sufficient to ensure rigidity.  "Drilling a Hexagonal Hole" from The Wolfram Demonstrations Project http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/DrillingAHexagonalHole/ Contributed by: Barry Cox (University of Wollongong, Australia) and Stan Wagon (Macalester College, USA) | ||||||||||||||
  
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