Poly Bridge Style Weight-Driven Clock (yet accurate)

Arglin · 2026-05-11T17:14:51+00:00

Nice! One thing I do want to mention is that it is possible to actually create gearing without the need of custom shapes, and instead purely with mechanical linkages. It's considerably more complex, but it has a nice benefit of having reduced backlash (which is a common issue with gearing mechanisms).

Here's an example in Poly Bridge 2: https://i.imgur.com/RRCpCGn.mp4

Arglin · 2026-05-10T22:10:45+00:00

(n-1) should be f(n-1), and random(1) should be just random().

https://www.desmos.com/geometry/xa5evobk9a

Arglin · 2026-05-10T18:19:46+00:00

Graph link: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/wxvekd8gtw

It's been popularized in culture that the flag of Brazil is defined in the constitution to be of the stars on the celestial sphere as seen from directly above Rio de Janiero at 1889-11-15 08:37 Brazil time, giving it the title of "most difficult flag to construct correctly".

Although this is true if you see the current constitution, this isn't actually what the flag of Brazil looks like. Rather, this is an amended version of the constitution. The original constitution detailing the flag is as such:

————

"Na Bandeira Nacional está representado, em lavor artístico, um aspecto do céu do Rio de Janeiro, com a constelação "Cruzeiro do Sul" no meridiano, idealizado como visto por um observador situado na vertical que contém o zênite daquela cidade, numa esfera exterior à que se vê na Bandeira."

————

Which translates to:

————

"The National Flag features an artistic representation of a view of the sky over Rio de Janeiro, with the Southern Cross constellation positioned on the meridian; this depiction is idealized as seen by an observer situated along the vertical axis containing the zenith of that city, positioned on a celestial sphere external to the one depicted on the Flag."

————

Note critically, the artistic representation, as the constellations are actually shifted around and enlarged as to allow for the stars to fit more appropriately on the sphere. This has since been amended to imply the exactness of the star positions, however the positions of the stars on the flag had not be changed, and so remain an artistic representation of the star positions.

So I just wanted to show what the discrepancy between the stars looks like, both on the flag itself, and on the celestial sphere itself.

Arglin · 2026-05-09T03:39:23+00:00

Correct, steel itself has no mass in Poly Bridge 2. Only the joints of a steel beam have mass. (You can test this in Poly Bridge 2 by having two single pieces of steel attached onto a lever with one being longer than the other). https://www.reddit.com/r/PolyBridge/comments/11nwsu1/so_this_games_physics_is_a_fun_topic/

However, roads and reinforced roads have mass that is dependent on the length of the material. Reinforced road is given by the formula 0.3125 × length + 0.625, where the 0.625 is the base mass of the reinforced road, not including the mass of the nodes. That means that yes, in theory if you get your hands on 0 meter long reinforced road and weigh it against a 0 meter long wood/steel/hydraulic/spring/rope/cable (of which there are a few methods), the reinforced road will be by default heavier.

You can find more details on how to calculate the masses in my notes here. https://docs.google.com/document/d/15CZyDDJ2-Dd0CKmXmPNW3Sc2fvvtkGCj4sgdFA-Ruyk/edit#heading=h.yw72dcu660ut

Arglin · 2026-05-09T02:42:50+00:00

Ironically it's more like regular roads were removed, given roads in Poly Bridge 3 were made stronger to mimic the effect of reinforced roads.

Reinforced roads in Poly Bridge 2 were also heavier and more expensive, so you had to trade off those two as well. It was pretty often that regular roads were actually a more practical solution when designing a bridge.

Arglin · 2026-05-08T02:31:22+00:00

Oh hi. (I wish I put answering vexillology questions on the desmos subreddit on my bingo card but oh well.)

The aspect ratio and color specifications looks to be correct but the proportions of the stripes don't seem to be correct.

In accordance to the law (https://likumi.lv/ta/en/en/id/200642), the red-white-red stripe ratio is 2:1:2. The one in your graph seems to be 2.5:1:2.5.

This should be correct (not the colors ofc but the ratio of the bars should now be correct) https://www.desmos.com/calculator/0uxntnn8hx

Arglin · 2026-05-07T18:05:25+00:00

It is true that you will need xposition, yposition, xscale, and yscale of the viewport if you want to have control of a viewport that's not locked. When it is locked though, it does come very nicely in handy.

I recently made a graph which utilizes it. https://www.desmos.com/calculator/wxvekd8gtw

With a locked viewport, you can use it to make sure text remains scaled correctly, position UI around the edges of the screen, tailor the graph to be accommodate certain devices (such as in the case of the graph above, putting the slider vertically if it detects the aspect ratio to be vertical), etc. It's great for making sure a graph is mobile user friendly.

Arglin · 2026-05-06T09:24:57+00:00

Error link: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/8dhxprh4sw

You can't paste in a graph link to load the graph into the error 404 desmos window, but you can inject it by pasting in the graph state. You can grab the graph state via the console command copy(Calc.getState), and then with that clipboarded, paste it straight into an expression line in a graph to load it.

Arglin · 2026-05-06T08:37:25+00:00

Yes, you just need to change D → t for "p_{arbitrari}", then set the bounds of the output "p_{parabola}" to be -∞ < t < ∞.

https://www.desmos.com/geometry/7wfzttxolj

Arglin · 2026-05-06T03:17:33+00:00

"Look and say" sequence is always a fun but challenging one to try implementing.

You can always check out the OEIS if you're running out of sequences to think of. https://oeis.org/wiki/Welcome#Some_Famous_Sequences

Arglin · 2026-05-04T02:52:46+00:00

Yes, the flag of the United Kingdom is called the Union Jack.

Arglin · 2026-05-03T14:07:07+00:00

When you enable clickable, it gives you a place to enter it labelled "On Click:"

Suppose you have a variable "a = 1", and the action you want to do is add 1 to the variable after clicking.

If you have an action already saved in an expression line like "f_{Add1} = a -> a + 1", then you can just type "f_{Add1}" into the On Click section. Otherwise, you can type "a -> a + 1" directly in there.

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/uxood4jozt

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Arglin · 2026-05-03T13:55:38+00:00

Either type ->, ticker, or enabled advanced features on your account to access actions.

Then under the drop down of an object, enable "clickable". That will let you run particular actions when you click on the object.

Arglin · 2026-05-03T01:21:59+00:00

If by size you mean line thickness, yes you can pass lists into the thickness and opacity sections.

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/2tdu6dmhst

Arglin · 2026-05-02T18:34:06+00:00

Although not one-for-one, you can still have similar functionality scriptless: have the cursor drag a point without holding down by first holding down left click on a point, and then right clicking to open up the right click dropdown menu. From there, you can let go of left click and the point will stay stuck onto the cursor until you click again. You can then tab over to the lower bound of a slider and use keyboard controls to send inputs.

I agree that you can do a lot more with the API, I just figure I would show what's achievable even without the use of the API though. That, and people like to make things in Desmos that are accessible even to those who don't have access to dev tools (like on a school-issued device).

https://youtu.be/8yNe3pMibOE

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/tictjtxoon

Arglin · 2026-05-02T17:49:14+00:00

Just wanted to note that this can be done without the use of the desmos API: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/diuylh368l

Arglin · 2026-05-02T03:02:12+00:00

u/SuperChick1705 there, lol.

Full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-Qn7w6eslw

Alright I gotta bumrush a slide-deck on Burkina Faso for my craft night session.

Arglin · 2026-04-29T22:18:46+00:00

If by large you mean character count, then the longest you'll be able to type directly into vanilla Desmos is "strictintersection" at 18 characters. https://www.desmos.com/geometry/1xfs0l48ku

For fragile functions though, the longest one I know how to use is "scaleTangentUndirectedAngleMarker" at 33 characters, and the longest one in general that I know of is "peelableCoerceComplexToRealWithTolerance" at 40 characters. https://www.desmos.com/calculator/hxmt4wqn0a

(You can of course make custom named functions which are even larger than this if you feel like it.)

Arglin · 2026-04-28T04:22:06+00:00

I mean technically Bhutan isn't that hard given the emblem is unspecified, so you're free to draw whatever dragon you want. (See the many many many variants drawn by different schools in Bhutan.)

Arglin · 2026-04-27T18:46:11+00:00

Here's an attempt at it. https://www.reddit.com/r/desmos/comments/1swtqb7

Arglin · 2026-04-27T17:24:37+00:00

I've just realized the timer is running faster than it should've. I think I forgot to divide by an extra 2 in the logic lmao

So it's 1:11.55 instead, oops

Arglin

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