Talk:Tri-oval

NASCAR Mid‑importance

This article is part of WikiProject NASCAR, an attempt to improve and standardize articles related to NASCAR. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, you can visit the project to-do page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.NASCARWikipedia:WikiProject NASCARTemplate:WikiProject NASCARNASCAR articles

Mid

This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Contribute to the project:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

number of turns[edit]

While an oval has four turns, a tri-oval has an "extra" fifth turn.

What does 'turn' mean in this sentence? I don't see five of anything in the illustration; nor do I see four discrete 'turns' in an oval. —Tamfang (talk) 23:57, 10 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unsure about why 5, but I imagine if the curve is represented by straight segments and circle arc, a driver "turns" to the new curvature, so each "corner" would seem to be 2 turns "sharp turn" (small radius), holding, and then "turning" back straight again. So it makes sense an oval is "2 sharp turns" needing four transitions, while a tri0oval by logic would have 6 "turns", two on each corner. I imagine "5" might come because one of the "less sharp" corners is smooth enough that it feels like one movement, rather than 2 distinct motions? Tom Ruen (talk) 02:17, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Like how a curve of constant width based on a scalene triangle [1] can have five segments, heh. —Tamfang (talk) 20:20, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]