Wolfram Demonstrations Project

13,000+ Open Interactive Demonstrations
Powered by Notebook Technology »

Constructing an Ellipse with a Tusi Couple

Initializing live version
Download to Desktop

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System

Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.

This Demonstration constructs an ellipse with a Tusi couple. You can change the eccentricity of the ellipse and watch the changes in the vector elements used in its construction. You can also show the foci and the directrices of the ellipse.

Contributed by: Tomas Garza (September 2019)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

Details

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, a thirteenth-century Persian mathematician, devised a technique to generate linear motion from the sum of two circular motions. Choosing an appropriate position of the generating point may produce other curves, such as the ellipse described in this Demonstration. Further details can be found in [1, 2].

References

[1] Wikipedia. "Nasir al-Din al-Tusi." (Sep 5, 2019) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasir_al-Din_al-Tusi.

[2] Wikipedia. "Ellipse." (Sep 5, 2019) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipse.

Snapshots

Embed Code

Take advantage of the Wolfram Notebook Emebedder for the recommended user experience.

Related Demonstrations More by Author
Browse all topics
Feedback (field required)
Email (field required) Name
Occupation Organization
Note: Your message & contact information may be shared with the author of any specific Demonstration for which you give feedback.
Send