7/5/2023 Hypotrochoid - Wikipedia

Hypotrochoid
In geometry, a hypotrochoid is a
roulette traced by a point attached to a
circle of radius r rolling around the
inside of a fixed circle of radius R, where
the point is a distance d from the center
of the interior circle.

The parametric equations for a

hypotrochoid are:[1]

The red curve is a hypotrochoid drawn as the smaller black circle

rolls around inside the larger blue circle (parameters are
R = 5, r = 3, d = 5).

where θ is the angle formed by the horizontal and the center of the rolling circle (these are not polar
equations because θ is not the polar angle). When measured in radian, θ takes values from 0 to
(where LCM is least common multiple).

Special cases include the hypocycloid with d = r and the ellipse with R = 2r and d ≠ r.[2] The
eccentricity of the ellipse is

becoming 1 when (see Tusi couple).

The classic Spirograph toy traces out hypotrochoid and epitrochoid curves.

Hypotrochoids describe the support of the eigenvalues of some random matrices with cyclic
correlations[3]

See also
Cycloid
Cyclogon
Epicycloid
Rosetta (orbit)
Apsidal precession
Spirograph

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypotrochoid 1/2
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References
1. J. Dennis Lawrence (1972). A
catalog of special plane curves (http
s://archive.org/details/catalogofspeci
al00lawr/page/165). Dover
Publications. pp. 165–168 (https://ar
chive.org/details/catalogofspecial00l
awr/page/165). ISBN 0-486-60288-5.
2. Gray, Alfred. Modern Differential
Geometry of Curves and Surfaces
with Mathematica (https://books.goo
gle.com/books?id=-LRumtTimYgC&p
g=PA906) (Second ed.). CRC Press.
p. 906. ISBN 9780849371646.
3. Aceituno, Pau Vilimelis; Rogers, Tim;
Schomerus, Henning (2019-07-16).
"Universal hypotrochoidic law for
random matrices with cyclic
correlations" (https://link.aps.org/doi/
10.1103/PhysRevE.100.010302).
Physical Review E. 100 (1): 010302.
doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.100.010302 The ellipse (drawn in red) may be expressed as a special case of
(https://doi.org/10.1103%2FPhysRev the hypotrochoid, with R = 2r (Tusi couple); here
E.100.010302). R = 10, r = 5, d = 1.

External links
Weisstein, Eric W. "Hypotrochoid" (https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hypotrochoid.html).
MathWorld.
Flash Animation of Hypocycloid (http://www.mekanizmalar.com/hypocycloid.html)
Hypotrochoid (http://xahlee.org/SpecialPlaneCurves_dir/Hypotrochoid_dir/hypotrochoid.html) from
Visual Dictionary of Special Plane Curves, Xah Lee
Interactive hypotrochoide animation (https://www.geogebra.org/m/pTrc52nv)
O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Hypotrochoid" (https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/
Curves/Hypotrochoid.html), MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews

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