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Checking your ellipses

2:01 AM, Wednesday July 28th 2021

Hi, I recently just started the 250 cylinders challenge, and I'm a little confused about I should check the alignment of my ellipses to the minor axis. The lesson page says to "look really close" at each ellipse to find the line the cuts the two halves equally, which sounds pretty subjective to me. My strategy for this first page was to try to imagine the major axis with the help of a ruler, and then draw the line that would (1) be perpendicular to that major axis, and (2) kinda looks like it bisects the ellipse into equal halves. In the end, it feels like a bunch of guesswork and I'm wondering if there's a more objective way to check my ellipses.

Am I thinking too hard about this? Is taking my best guess just a part of the exercise, or is there a "correct" way to be checking the alignment that I'm missing?

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12:28 PM, Wednesday July 28th 2021

I am currently on this lesson to so take my answer with a pinch of salt.

I would say you have to use your judgement rather than it being subjective. I think most people will find the minor axis to be in pretty much the same place if the ellipse is fairly true.

I would ignore the major axis. Everything I read on this says the major axis irrelevant so I wouldn't use that to gauge anything.

The way I have been doing it is to use the edge of a clear ruler to represent the minor axis and move it until it looks like one half of the ellipse could be folded over on top of the other. I haven't had too many problems doing it this way.

1:15 AM, Thursday July 29th 2021

Thanks for the reply! I guess it really does just come down to personal judgement.

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