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Laboratory Project Running Circles Part 2

This document summarizes a laboratory project investigating hypocycloids and epicycloids, which are curves traced by a point on a rolling circle. It outlines steps to derive parametric equations for hypocycloids and epicycloids, experiment with varying the radius and fractional values of a, and observe how changing these parameters affects the shape of the curves. The document also notes specific curves like the astroid that result from certain integer values of a.

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Nehal Anurag
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152 views5 pages

Laboratory Project Running Circles Part 2

This document summarizes a laboratory project investigating hypocycloids and epicycloids, which are curves traced by a point on a rolling circle. It outlines steps to derive parametric equations for hypocycloids and epicycloids, experiment with varying the radius and fractional values of a, and observe how changing these parameters affects the shape of the curves. The document also notes specific curves like the astroid that result from certain integer values of a.

Uploaded by

Nehal Anurag
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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872 Laboratory Project: Running Circles around Circles:

Part 2
Wednesday, January 11, 2017 7:36 PM

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Laboratory Project: Running Circles around Circles

In this project we investigate families of curves, called hypocycloids and epicycloids, that are
generated by the motion of a point on a circle that rolls inside or outside another circle.

1. A hypocycloid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocycloid) is a curve traced out by a fixed


point P on a circle C of radius b as C rolls on the inside of a circle with center O and a
radius a.

Solutions Page 1
Show that if the initial position of P is (a, 0) and the parameter θ is chosen as in the figure,
then parametric equations of the hypocycloid are:

2. Use a graphing device to draw the graphs of hypocycloids with a being a positive integer
and b = 1.

How does the value of a affect the graph?

Show that if we take a = 4, then the parametric equations of the hypocycloid reduce to:

This curve is called a hypocycloid of four cusps, or an astroid.

3. Now try b = 1 and a = n/d, a fraction where n and d have no common factor.

First let n = 1 and try to determine graphically the effect of the denominator d on the
shape of the graph.

Then let n vary while keeping d constant.

What happens when n = d + 1?

4. What happens if b = 1 and a is irrational?

Experiment with an irrational number like 21/2 or e - 2.

Take larger and larger values for θ and speculate on what would happen if we were to
graph the hypocycloid for all real values of θ.

5. If the circle C rolls on the outside of the fixed circle, the curve traced out by P is called an
epicycloid.

Find parametric equations for the epicycloid.

Solutions Page 2
6. Investigate the possible shapes for epicycloids.

Use methods similar to Problems 2 to 4.

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/xtjsftno6m

For a = 0, the solution is the point (0, 0).

For a = 1, the solution is the point (1, 0).

For a = 2, the solution is a point that travels back and forth along the line from (-2, 0) to
(2, 0).

For a > 2, we obtain a hypocycloid of a cusps.

Solutions Page 3
Also note that for a > 2, for even values of a produce a symmetric shape about both the
y - axis and x-axis.

But for odd values of a, the curve is symmetric about only the x-axis.

If a = 4:

Solutions Page 4
Solutions Page 5

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