cycloid's Usage Examples:

To facilitate the drawing of epicycloidal teeth in practice, Willis showed how to approximate to their figure by means of two circular arcsone concave, for the flank, and the other convex, for the faceand each having for its radius the mean radius of curvature of the epicycloidal arc.

The name cycloid is now restricted to the curve described when the tracing-point is on the circumference of the circle; if the point is either within or without the circle the curves are generally termed trochoids, but they are also known as the prolate and curtate cycloids respectively.

In the case of a particle oscillating under gravity on a smooth cycloid from rest at the cusp the hotlograph is a circle through the pole, described with constant velocity.

Evangelista Torricelli, in the first regular dissertation on the cycloid (De dimensione cycloidis, an appendix to his De dimensione parabolae, 1644), states that his friend and tutor Galileo discovered the curve about 1599.

The hypocycloid derived from the same circles is shown as curve d, and is seen to consist of three cusps arranged internally to the fixed circle; the corresponding hypotrochoid consists of a three-foil and is shown in curve e.

The cycloid was a famous curve in those days; it had been discussed by Galileo, Descartes, Fermat, Roberval and Torricelli, who had in turn exhausted their skill upon it.

It may be regarded as an epicycloid in which the rolling and fixed circles are equal in diameter, as the inverse of a parabola for its focus, or as the caustic produced by the reflection at a spherical surface of rays emanating from a point on the circumference.

'The two treatises on the cycloid and on the cissoid, 'c.

It is interesting to compare the forms of these curves with the three forms of the cycloid.

Synonyms:

cycloidal, rounded,

Antonyms:

thin, straight line, angular,