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The intriguing mechanics of a tractrix of cards

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2022

Subhranil De*
Affiliation:
School of Natural Sciences, Indiana University Southeast, New Albany, IN 47150, USA e-mail: subde@ius.edu
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Figure 1 shows the photograph of a tractrix made of cards. This is a simple yet captivating way to make a tractrix — an arrangement that has recently appeared in some engaging pedagogical resources and literature [1, 2]. When closely spaced cards lean like this, one after another, over a horizontal plane, the contour created is a tractrix — a curve of significance in mathematics, since its revolution around its asymptote produces a pseudosphere: a curved surface with constant negative Gaussian curvature [3, 4].

Type
Articles
Copyright
© The Authors, 2022 Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Mathematical Association

References

Polster, B., TracTricks Math Horizons, 21(4) (April 2014) pp. 1819.Google Scholar
Walsh, Daniel, Sudo make me a pseudosphere, accessed December 2021 at https://danielwalsh.tumblr.com/post/2173134224/sudo-make-me-a-pseudosphere Google Scholar
Wolfram Math World, Tractrix, accessed December 2021 at https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Tractrix.html Google Scholar
Wolfram Math World, Pseudosphere, accessed December 2021 at https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Pseudosphere.html Google Scholar