Why is a tripod better than a quadripod

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Learn more. Quadpod or tetrapod? Asked 4 years, 10 months ago. Active 4 years, 10 months ago. Viewed 2k times. Improve this question. BladorthinTheGrey 6, 3 3 gold badges 32 32 silver badges 67 67 bronze badges. Bipod means "two-leg".

Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. However, even if you use quadrapod , quadripod and quadrupod , Google Ngrams shows a massive bias towards using tetrapod : Furthermore, there is a general linguistic convention that you try to use the same language when forming a new term. Improve this answer. Not many Latin words are based on "quadra"; it's not really a productive prefix. The normal combining form is "quadri-" most Latin combining forms end in the vowel "i" and the form used before labial consonants like "p" was "quadru-", as in "quadruped".

According to the OED, there are some words formed in modern English with the prefix "quad-", such as "quadplex". An Ngrams search for quadripod as well puts quadripod and quadrapod about even. News Guardian. Recent queries. Send a query.

Lucky dip. Any answers? Nooks and crannies. Semantic enigmas. The body beautiful. Red tape, white lies. Speculative science. This sceptred isle. Root of all evil. Ethical conundrums. This sporting life. Stage and screen. Birds and the bees. Roger Hudson, Brampton Canada Because a balance on two legs of a 3-legger would require the centre of gravity to be perfectly balanced between two legs i.

It would also need to be thus balanced under variable and moving weight demands - all but impossible. So a balance is found - with the flat seat at a slight angle - where three legs are fixed, i. On a 4-leg, any three legs can meet the countours of a vaguely even floor with the seat at a similar angle but movement of the mass on the seat will shift the equilibrium to an alternative settling point: on a 3-leg, there IS no alternative, because 3 legs can only make one combination of three.

M B Drennan, Oxford UK Because of the mathematical principle that any three points must always lie in the same plane, whereas this is not necessarily true for four points.

Incidentally, it's always possible to rotate a wobbly four-legged stool so that it becomes stable.