Why Rocket Fuel is a rounded triangle: inside the tablet and the box

This post is a tour of one box: ours. It goes from the outside in, shape first, then the panel, the directions line and the two warnings, each described as printed. Where the box doesn't state something, we say so.

A triangle with no straight sides

The Rocket Fuel tablet is a rounded triangle. The precise name is a Reuleaux triangle, and it can be drawn with a compass. Start with an equilateral triangle. From each corner, draw a circular arc connecting the other two corners, using the side as the radius. The three arcs are the outline.

It is named after Franz Reuleaux, a 19th-century German engineer who pioneered the study of machines, though the shape was known long before him: Leonardo da Vinci used it for a map projection around 1514, and Leonhard Euler may have been the first to notice its defining property, in 1771.

That property is constant width. Set the shape between two parallel rulers that both touch it, and the gap stays the same however you turn it. Wikipedia calls it the simplest and best known curve of constant width other than the circle. Its corners meet at 120°, the sharpest possible on such a curve, and by the Blaschke-Lebesgue theorem it has the smallest area of any curve of a given constant width.

Where else the shape turns up

Once you know the outline you start seeing it. Wikipedia's list of uses includes guitar picks, fire hydrant valve nuts, pencils, drill bits that cut square holes with rounded corners, and a commemorative coin from Bermuda. It is also one answer to a classic puzzle: a manhole cover that isn't a circle but still can't fall through its own hole.

The same page is candid about what the shape is bad at: it can roll, but it makes a poor wheel, because it does not roll about a fixed center, and an axle on such wheels would bounce three times per revolution.

Why we chose it for a tablet

The reason is a design statement, nothing more: we chose a shape that is easy to pick out of a pack and hard to mistake for a round pill. Three corners to hold, an outline you can recognize by touch, and that is all the shape tells you.

The outline says nothing about the ingredient, the amount or the directions. Those are printed in words and numbers, and they would read the same on any other shape.

The panel: one line, 300 mg

Turn the box over. The title comes first. Under 21 CFR 101.36(e)(1), "Supplement Facts" must be set larger than all other print in the nutrition label, with the title and all headings bolded. The panel sits in a box drawn with hairlines (101.36(e)(2)), and the text inside, apart from title, headings and footnotes, must be no smaller than 8 point.

Serving size comes first, in a term that fits the form, such as "tablets", "capsules", "packets" or "teaspoonfuls" (101.36(b)(1)(i)). Ours is 1 tablet. Servings per container follows unless it is already given in the net quantity statement (101.36(b)(1)(ii)); with 2 tablets in every pack, that is 2 servings.

Then the ingredient lines. Rocket Fuel has one: Natural Oyster Extract Powder, 300 mg. Oyster extract has no Daily Value, so it falls under the rule for "other dietary ingredients": declared by common or usual name, with the amount by weight in metric units, the ingredient's own weight and not a component's or source's (101.36(b)(3)(i) and (ii)). Each such line also carries a symbol, an asterisk for example, pointing to the footnote "Daily Value not established" (101.36(b)(3)(iv)).

Our own label Rocket Fuel From $14.95 See the label

Below the box comes the ingredient statement, which the regulation places outside and immediately below the nutrition label, or to its right when there is no room (101.36(d)). On our box that is where xylitol and starch are listed. Three ingredients in all, as the product page puts it: natural oyster extract powder, xylitol and starch.

The directions line and what a pack covers

Directions are not part of the panel; they are a line of their own. Ours reads 1 tablet every 3 days ("with or without food", the product page adds). That line turns a pack into days, because every Rocket Fuel pack holds 2 tablets. Prices are from the product page at the time of writing.

Thirty days at that schedule is 10 tablets, which no single pack matches exactly. The product page also lists a subscription delivered every 2 weeks (20% off) or every 4 weeks (15% off) at the time of writing, with the option to skip or cancel at any time. US shipping is free on every order.

The warnings and the small print

Two warnings are printed on the box, and the product page gives them as: "Contains oyster (shellfish). Do not take if allergic." and "Not intended for anyone under 18." Both are our own statements as the manufacturer; one names the source of the only dietary ingredient, the other says who the product is not intended for. If either raises a personal question, ask a doctor or pharmacist, with the box in hand.

One more line on the product page is worth reading exactly as printed: "produced in an FDA-registered, GMP-certified facility and independently third-party tested." Each of those three phrases deserves a post of its own.

What the box doesn't say, and what a label is

A tour like this is also a list of absences, and we would rather name them. The box does not state the tablet's weight or width, an extract ratio, the oyster species, or a harvest location beyond "wild-caught Atlantic". Where a number isn't printed, the answer is "not stated".

Dietary supplements don't require FDA approval before they are sold. The panel, the directions line and the warnings are the manufacturer's own declaration, made in the format the regulation lays down. Read ours the way you would read any other box: line by line, as printed. If a line raises a question about you personally, take the box to a doctor or pharmacist and ask.