Walking Randomly » Simulating Harmonographs

Submitted by michael on Mon, 01/28/2019 - 11:32
Excerpt

magine that you have attached a pencil to a pendulum so that it brushes across a piece of paper as the pendulum swings back and forth. When the pendulum finishes swinging you will end up with a single straight line drawn on your paper – very dull indeed! Now imagine further that you somehow manage to connect a second pendulum to your pencil which oscillates at right angles to the first. The resulting drawing might look something like the image below. If your imagination fails you (or if my explanation isn’t up to the job) then you can see a video of the set up I am trying to describe by clicking here.