Quote:
Originally Posted by psyang
Yes, this is what I was going for.
Spoiler!
The back wheel always points towards the front wheel which means if we draw a line tangent from the back wheel curve, it will intersect the front wheel curve. The endpoints of this line are the positions of the back and front wheel.
Since the distance between back and front wheel is constant, these tangent lines should all be the same length.
Tangents going left to right - lengths are all over the place
Tangents going right to left - lengths are constant
In the above images, I chose which curve was the back wheel curve by looking at the tangents. Switching curves, it's obvious that drawing tangents wouldn't always intersect the other curve.
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Neat, I knew the answer because I know what bike tracks should look like. I had no idea how to actually explain it.