{"id":44204,"date":"2026-03-27T11:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T16:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=44204"},"modified":"2026-03-27T11:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T16:38:10","slug":"word-of-the-day-1103","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2026\/03\/27\/word-of-the-day-1103\/","title":{"rendered":"Word Of The Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Catenary<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The catenary is the shape taken by an inextensible, homogeneous, infinitely thin, flexible, massive wire hanging from two points, placed in a uniform gravitational field. Galileo posed the problem and observed that the curve followed by the wire was approximately an arc of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mathcurve.com\/courbes2d.gb\/parabole\/parabole.shtml\">parabola<\/a>, the approximation improves when you extend the wire. These are Leibniz, Jean Bernoulli and Huygens who found, independently in 1691, the right equations.<em> [&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/mathcurve.com\/courbes2d.gb\/chainette\/chainette.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Catenary or Funicular Curve<\/a>&#8220;, <strong>mathcurve.com<\/strong>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/xkcd.com\/3176\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Noted in this <em><strong>xkcd<\/strong> <\/em>cartoon<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/imgs.xkcd.com\/comics\/inverted_catenaries.png?resize=317%2C317&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"317\" height=\"317\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Yes, I&#8217;ve fallen, inadvertently, far behind on my <em><strong>xkcd<\/strong> <\/em>studies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Catenary: The catenary is the shape taken by an inextensible, homogeneous, infinitely thin, flexible, massive wire hanging from two points, placed in a uniform gravitational field. Galileo posed the problem and observed that the curve followed by the wire was approximately an arc of\u00a0parabola, the approximation improves when you extend \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2026\/03\/27\/word-of-the-day-1103\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44205,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44204\/revisions\/44205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}