Consider a standard sine curve. It is periodic with a period of 2pi, and each period has two, for lack of a better term, lobes, one concave down, one concave up. Revolving a lobe about the x-axis results in a somewhat lemon-shaped solid, and revolving the whole sine curve about the x-axis forms a beaded strand of these solids. Alternatively, revolving a lobe about a vertical line at a odd multiple of pi/2 results in a bowl shape. let's consider the lobe from x = 0 to x = pi. The derivative of sin(x) is cos(x), and evaluating cos(x) at x = 0 and x = pi, we find the tangents of sin(x) at those values to have slopes of +1 and -1 respectively. This implies that the tangents intersect in a right angle, and that four lobes could be joined endpoint-to-endpoint to form a smooth, convex closed curve. This curve would have the symmetry of a square, and like a square, could form two different solids of revolution, one analogous to a bicone, the other analogous to a cylinder. But perhaps the more interesting solids are ones where three of these curves, placed in mutually orthogonal planes form a skeleton of sorts. this can be done in two ways that result in octahedral symmetry: the curves intersect where the lobes are joined, or they intersect at the crests of the lobes... comparing to squares again, this is analogous to either three orthogonal squares intersecting along the lines through opposite edge midpoints or intersecting along their diagonals. One could simply take the convex hull of these skeletal forms, but I think the more interesting construction would be to create a stack of similar curves atop one of the curves where the joints or the crests trace the other two curves... similar to building up a sphere from three orthogonal circles and stacking smaller circles atop one circle while following the circumferences of the other two... though, would the resulting solid have octahedral symmetry still? And can the amplitude and wavelength of a sine curve be manipulated such that lobes can be smoothly joined to form curves analogous to other regular polygons or even star polygons? I've titled this musing "sinoids", and while sinoid doesn't appear to be defined in the mathematical literature, I'm not sure if it's the plane curves or the solids that the term would better fit. Addendum 2024/08/25: Let's consider a lobe of the standard sine curve positioned so it's endpoints are on the x and y-axes and it's crest is on the line y=x. The chord of thelobe has length pi and forms the hypotenuse of a 45-45-90 right triangle with the x and y-axes. As such, the x and y-intercepts are at (pi*sqrt(2))/2. Furthermore, the midpoint of the curve is pi/2 from the origin along the line y=x, and the crest is at pi/2+1. Such a lobe is comparable to a quarter circle centered at the origin, and four such lobes are comparable to a circle, though as pi/2 + 1 > (pi*sqrt(2))/2 The radius isn't constant and is greater at the cusps of a lobe than at the points where lobes are joined. As such, let's consider approximating this lobe with a quadrant of a supercircle, that is, the curve: x^n + y^n = r^n where n=2 gives us the classic circle. If we consider the supercircle n = 3 and r = 1, then the crest of the quadrant would go though the point x=y=cube root of a half and it's distance from the origin would be the square root of twice the square of this cube root. Representing the cube root as a rational power, this is written symbolically as sqrt(2*(0.5^1/3)^2) replacing 3 with x and setting the crest's distance from the origin to the value listed above divided by its intercepts, for the sine lobe, we get: sqrt(2*(0.5^1/n)^2) = sqrt(2)/2 + sqrt(2)/pi squaring both sides 2*(0.5^1/n)^2 = 1/2 +2/pi + 2/pi^2 divide both sides by 2 (0.5^1/n)^2 = 1/pi^2 + 1/pi + 1/ 1/4 Combine fractions on the right (0.5^1/n)^2 = (4 + 4pi + pi^2)/4pi^2 square root both sides: 0.5^1/n = (pi + 2)/2pi I'm not sure how to simplify this further(I think logarithms would be involved, but I've forgotten what I've learned about manipulating equations with logs), but rearranging the equation to make it equal 0 and plugging various values in for n into Google's calculator, I've determined n is between 3.45684 and 3.45685... subtracting the nth root of a half from the right side gets about 4e-7 for the last digit of n being 4 and -6E-8 for the last digit being 5, which is about as much precision as I care for a numerical approximation in the absence of an exact formula. Also, I have no idea how to tell how well this supercircle would approximate the sine lobe anywhere other than its crest and endpoints. Also, the crest of said lobe would have coordinates according to the following equation: (pi/2 + 1)^2 = 2x^2 square root both sides: pi/2 + 1 = sqrt(2)x divide both sides by sqrt(2): (pi/2 + 1)/sqrt(2) = x put in proper form x = (pi*sqrt(2) + sqrt(2))/2 ~ 2.9285 with y being the same.