Search Results for “offset-curve”
Pascal's Limacon
Explore this interesting curve by changing lengths, then see the animation which creates the limacon.
Four Bar Linkage
You can drag the vertices of the shadow linkage to alter its geometry. Can you create a linkage which draws a figure 8? How about the letter D? How close to a straight line can you get? If you like this, you might like my 4 bar linkage clock app.
Cubic Spline
Many computer drawing programs use cubic splines to represent arcs. Our diagram shows how a spline can be constructed from 4 control points. We highlight that it is a moving average of two parabolas. These parabolas are exactly the string art parabolas.
Lissajous Figure
These were (easy and) fun to create on oscilloscopes in the dark days before computers.
Cycloid
If we look beyond the circumference, what path does a point attached to a rolling wheel take?
Sinusoidal Tangent Mirrors
Look at a point on a sinusoidal curve (y=sin(x)) with a tangent line. Then, look at a point on the negative of your sinusoidal curve (y=-sin(x)) that is a mirror image of your first point. Then, notice that these mirror image points have mirror image tangent lines.
Rotating Cube
I saw a demo where a foam cube had a knitting needle inserted along the long diagonal, and was rotated by spinning the needle between the palms of the hands. The sides of the cube formed a curve... in fact a portion of a hyperbola, as this video illustrates.
Cam with reciprocating roller follower
Alter the parameters of the output curve and follower geometry, and see the cam shape change.
