Skip to main content

Euler Spiral

I was reading a calculus textbook when I noticed it said that cos(x2) doesn't have an elementary antiderivative. Elementary antiderivative? Clearly, they were hiding something. They didn't say it didn't have an antiderivative; they said it didn't have an elementary antiderivative. Of course, I wanted to know what the antiderivative was. If it wasn't elementary, it had to be really awesome.

I looked up the integral of sin(x2). Turns out, the integral cannot be expressed as anything other than itself. It's known as the Fresnel S integral, is written as S(x), and is defined as the integral of sin(x2). There's another Fresnel integral known as the Fresnel C integral which is written as C(x) and defined as the integral of cos(x2).

I also saw some graphs of the integrals. One really cool graph involved the parametric equations x = C(t) and y = S(t), and was called the "Euler spiral." It had a cool spirally shape, and I immediately knew that I had to graph it myself. I ended up writing an interactive JavaScript program to graph the parametric equations. Here it is; enjoy!

x = C(t)
y = S(t)

Max t:
t step size: * .001

Zoom X: %
Zoom Y: %


To receive updates, subscribe now!


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dividing Paper Puzzle

When I was young, I would fold a sheet of letter paper in half, for origami projects. It occurred to me that the two halves looked almost the same as the whole sheet of paper - except they were smaller. I could see they weren't exactly the same shape; they were off by a little bit. But the idea stuck in my head. You can use a pen, instead of scissors, to halve the paper. Those rectangles all have the same shape, but are different sizes. One night when I was 12, I thought about my idea. I wondered if it was possible to have a sheet of paper that could be cut in half, resulting in 2 smaller versions of the same paper. That would be neat, to be able to cut a paper in half and get 2 papers that had the same exact shape. If that were possible, then you could cut  those  papers, too; and the resulting papers would have the same shape as all the other papers. You could keep cutting in half forever, and each paper, no matter how small, would have the same shape as all the others. I HAD to
6 comments
Read more

Pluto No Longer on the Horizon

This morning, New Horizons became the first spacecraft to make a flyby observation of the Pluto system. During the mission, the spacecraft captured the most detailed photographs of Pluto's surface we've ever had, and possibly ever will have. It also found many new properties including size, mass, atmosphere, and surface composition. In a period of a few hours, we discovered more about Pluto than we've found in the 85 years since Clyde Tombaugh captured its first photograph. Before After  (images credit: NASA) To complete this mission, the spacecraft flew for more than 9 years through the emptiness of space. This may sound like a long time, but it's actually amazingly quick. In fact, New Horizons set the record for the fastest speed at launch, and during the flyby, the spacecraft was moving at a rate of over 30,000 mph, or roughly 50 times the speed of sound. Picture an object twice as heavy as a grand piano moving 25 times faster than a bullet from a gun. Yikes. The man
2 comments
Read more

Gravity

Imagine the universe is filled with water. Instead of empty space, every inch of it contains pure water. No planets, no stars, only water. What happens? And what would happen if an air bubble formed? The answer to this question requires a basic understanding of gravity. Gravity is very important. It helps hold matter together, bends light, and distorts space-time (which, incidentally, is how it bends light). It also makes it possible to play football, and as Americans are big football fans, they would certainly agree that we couldn't live without it. Unfortunately, many Americans don't understand how gravity works. Admittedly, scientists haven't figured out a lot of things, but we do understand it well enough to make predictions and model physical events. One of the important things about gravity is that its strength is proportional to the inverse of the square of the distance. In other words, it gets weaker as you get farther away, based on the equation: F = c/d 2 where c
6 comments
Read more