matthen

Things of interest in Maths & Science

Photo

This animation suggests one way to draw a perfect ellipse by hand. Place two drawing pins in a board, and tie a piece of string around them (the red dotted lines in the picture). If you pull the string tight with a pen, then the curve you will get is an ellipse.  This means that the total length of the two red lines is constant. The two pins are at the foci of the ellipse, special points.  Planetary orbits are ellipses, with the Sun at a focus.  What would happen if you moved the pins closer and closer to each other? [code] [more]

This animation suggests one way to draw a perfect ellipse by hand. Place two drawing pins in a board, and tie a piece of string around them (the red dotted lines in the picture). If you pull the string tight with a pen, then the curve you will get is an ellipse.  This means that the total length of the two red lines is constant. The two pins are at the foci of the ellipse, special points.  Planetary orbits are ellipses, with the Sun at a focus.  What would happen if you moved the pins closer and closer to each other? [code] [more]

  1. vanitarrssi reblogged this from notean
  2. dadagadadatoiu reblogged this from pinto
  3. sablina reblogged this from petapeta
  4. tsykkzyktm reblogged this from pinto
  5. junmyk reblogged this from pinto
  6. noy41 reblogged this from naimononedari
  7. naimononedari reblogged this from reretlet
  8. newschoolnews reblogged this from reretlet
  9. hisame reblogged this from reretlet
  10. hystericmanniquie reblogged this from pinto
  11. ysknd reblogged this from pinto
  12. ngkb reblogged this from pinto
  13. re-venant reblogged this from reretlet
  14. y1s reblogged this from reretlet
  15. output1 reblogged this from reretlet
  16. reretlet reblogged this from pinto
  17. pinto reblogged this from fialux and added:
    This animation suggests one way to draw a perfect ellipse by hand. Place two drawing pins in a board, and tie a piece of...
  18. fialux reblogged this from plasticdreams
  19. ff-lgbt reblogged this from lenajima
  20. kazzxz reblogged this from petapeta
  21. glasslipids reblogged this from petapeta
  22. comicchu reblogged this from lenajima
  23. alluspoemion reblogged this from invoke
  24. neruko3114 reblogged this from ytsunetsune
  25. invoke reblogged this from petapeta
  26. yky reblogged this from plasticdreams
  27. catfreak0210 reblogged this from 1031jp
  28. koris1974 reblogged this from petapeta
  29. yshm reblogged this from plasticdreams
  30. lenajima reblogged this from petapeta
  31. nodoi reblogged this from petapeta
  32. askoi reblogged this from petapeta
  33. sg162 reblogged this from petapeta
  34. funkheadz reblogged this from petapeta
  35. daizydaizy reblogged this from nashi-kyo
  36. masterryanb reblogged this from arrjcc
  37. sighingdog reblogged this from plasticdreams
  38. cumicoco reblogged this from iwatuki
  39. moonpit reblogged this from petapeta
  40. rairaiken21 reblogged this from atm09td
  41. iwatuki reblogged this from nashi-kyo
  42. arrjcc reblogged this from petapeta
Comments | 305 notes
blog comments powered by Disqus
Matt Henderson

I post original stuff about maths, space, computational linguistics and other things that I like. This blog is meant to be accessible and interesting to people of all backgrounds. My undergrad was maths in Cambridge, and I'm now starting research in Speech and Language technology. Email me at If you're new, check out this overview of my posts.

Topics

Tweets

Recent Comments

Get Updates

Subscribe by email, to get the latest updates in your inbox automatically. Or use RSS if you have a news reader.

Share

I will pay you handsomely if you share my blog with your friends.