1029: Drawing Stars

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 20:07, 17 August 2013 by Dgbrt (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search
Drawing Stars
Screw these 36-degree angles. I'm converting to Judaism.
Title text: Screw these 36-degree angles. I'm converting to Judaism.

Explanation

Randall attempts to draw a five-pointed star, which is not easy by free-hand drawing on a sheet of paper. But this pentagram is the simplest regular star polygon in geometry.

The title text explains the fact that a five-pointed star has all angles at 36 degrees what sums to 180, like a common triangle. So Randall converts to Judaism with it's six pointed star symbol, which is much easier to draw because it is composed of two equilateral triangles.

Five-pointed stars may be easier for some because they can be drawn in one continuous motion.

Transcript

HOW TO DRAW A STAR:
[A slightly curved line is drawn, starting with a point near the top center of the panel, and going downward and to the left at approximately a 23-degree angle, with an arrow at the end.]
[Another slightly curved line goes up and to the right, creating a 34-degree angle with the first line.]
So far so good...
[A third line goes up and to the left, creating a 58-degree angle with the last line. The drawing now sort of resembles a tent being blown over in the wind.]
Steady as she goes...
[The fourth line goes down and to the right, creating an approximately 47-degree angle with the last line, and our star is beginning to look a bit askew.]
...uh oh.
Shitshitshit
[The fifth line comes up at a 48-degree angle, completely missing the first point by a mile, and our star has failed spectacularly.]
ABORT!
ABORT!


comment.png add a comment! ⋅ comment.png add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ Icons-mini-action refresh blue.gif refresh comments!

Discussion

They are however, incredibly easy to sew[1] 146.115.187.103 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The nice thing about knowing lots of geometric stars is that I could have easily salvaged that to make a slightly squashed 8-pointed star polygon (a.k.a. octagram, Schläfli symbol {8/3}). --Quicksilver (talk) 06:11, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Same here lol. I tried right after I read it and I actually got a tridecagram {13/5} thing. 108.162.222.148 16:54, 7 March 2015 (UTC)


The cursor and the drawing looks a bit like [turtle mode], that would explain the "Abort abort" reaction as the user would like to stop the script where it is. 108.162.229.111 12:01, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

He actually looks like he's very much on the right track to drawing an octogram. 108.162.219.226 21:23, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Isn't "converting to Judaism" not actually a thing? From memory there are strict rules governing who gets to be Jewish and who doesn't. Someone who isn't born Jewish won't ever be, no matter what.

You can definitely convert to Judaism and jews are commanded to accept converts as jews. Even if you are not born jewish, you can still convert. You might be thinking of being a kohen, which you can only be if your father was a kohen.172.70.38.46 03:27, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Reminds me of the Necronomicon gate symbol. It always struck me as looking like someone tried to draw a star, messed up, and then just kept going. DanielLC (talk) 09:27, 3 June 2024 (UTC)