Article: Mathematical highlighting
- Thread starter JustAnArtist
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You can view the page at http://www.coolminiornot.com/articles/content.php?1478-mathematical-highlighting&
To author and OP: Nice article. In an ideal world, all battles take place at high noon so this is a perfect reference tool already done up for us.
To Frank Battalglia: You are confusing two uses of the word tangent. The author is speaking about an angle formed between the horizon line and the tangent line (the line touching the curved surface exactly once). You then mistakenly interpret him to mean the trigonometric function, tangent, the ratio of two lengths of a right triangle, e.g. tan(x). Then you give a solution from physics which is correct but describes a situation other than this one. The textbook situation you are referring to is one where the source is behind an observer who is looking at a plane. The effect discussed in this article is for the observer seeing the sum effect of reflection for many different "planes" (to wit: one for each normal angle on the curved surface) from a light source above the object.
To samwisethegreat: You are totally correct that this is logical. The logic you are describing has a name. It is mathematics applied to the principles of (scarier word coming here) physics.
To Frank Battalglia: You are confusing two uses of the word tangent. The author is speaking about an angle formed between the horizon line and the tangent line (the line touching the curved surface exactly once). You then mistakenly interpret him to mean the trigonometric function, tangent, the ratio of two lengths of a right triangle, e.g. tan(x). Then you give a solution from physics which is correct but describes a situation other than this one. The textbook situation you are referring to is one where the source is behind an observer who is looking at a plane. The effect discussed in this article is for the observer seeing the sum effect of reflection for many different "planes" (to wit: one for each normal angle on the curved surface) from a light source above the object.
To samwisethegreat: You are totally correct that this is logical. The logic you are describing has a name. It is mathematics applied to the principles of (scarier word coming here) physics.
