Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The Pantograph

A pantograph is a mechanical linkage connected in a special manner based on parallelograms so that the movement of one pen, in tracing an image, produces identical movements in a second pen.



If a line drawing is traced by the first point, an identical, enlarged or miniaturized copy will be drawn by a pen fixed to the other. The pantograph was invented by Cristoph Scheiner.




This is a Java Applet created using GeoGebra from www.geogebra.org - it looks like you don't have Java installed, please go to www.java.com


The applet above demonstrates how the pantograph works.  Move the blue point (hinge) and draw any shape. 


Questions:
1.) What do you observe?
2.) What is the relationship between the blue figure and red figure?
3.) Justify your answer in 2.
4.) Prove that your answer in 2 will always hold.

Download the Applet

Related Links:


Source: Text Source Wikipedia

1 comment:

  1. A lovely applet thanks but as it stands the transformation will be a non-linear one as the yellow, blue and red points are not collinear. Please take a look at various pantograph designs at:
    http://research.shu.ac.uk/geogebra/ResourcesMisc.html
    Thanks
    Mark

    ReplyDelete