Definition
(noun) the planar curve on which a body subjected only to the force of gravity will slide (without friction) between two points in the least possible time. Finding the curve was a problem first posed by Galileo. In the late 17th century the Swiss mathematician Jakob Bernoulli offered a reward for the solution of this problem. He and his younger brother Johann, along with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Isaac Newton, and others, found the curve to be a cycloid.
DFW's Sentence The closest conventional analogue I could derive for this figure was a cycloid, L'Hopital's solution to Bernoulli's famous brachistochrone problem, the curve traced by a fixed point on the circumference of a circle rolling along a straight line.
My Sentence Shelby Donald stood among the remains of last night's argument, the third in as many days, when she realized she was caught in a brachistochrone problem of no small significant for no matter how loudly she availed upon the God's of better judgement her inbreed intemperance demanded satisfaction and would always gravitate her towards the most mercurial of men.
01: DFW Source: The Awakening of My Interest in Annular Systems (p.72)
02: Definition Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
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