Wolfram Demonstrations Project

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

Da Vinci's Construction of an Ellipse

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.

As vertex of triangle slides along the horizontal axis, vertex slides along the other axis, which does not have to be perpendicular. Vertex then traces out the arc of an ellipse. There can be two solutions for .

Contributed by: Borut Levart (April 2014)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

Snapshots

Details

Two locators control the position of vertex and the axis angle. You can vary the triangle sides and and the angle at vertex with the slider controls.

This method of drawing an ellipse was found by Leonardo da Vinci.

Reference

[1] D. Wells, The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry, London: Penguin, 1991.

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