One Loop for Every Tooth: Spirograph Wheel 52
Back in the day, when I was a kid and the only pens we had to use with our Spirograph sets were the ballpoint ones that came with the set, I dreaded Wheel 52 with Ring 150/105!
Why? Because the pattern it makes has 105 loops – that’s one loop for every tooth inside the ring! The pen went over the same area of the paper over and over again, saturating it with ink. Eventually, before you finished the pattern, the ballpoint pen would be tearing the paper. Yuck!
No more, with fine felt tip pens. You can get great color with a light hand, and the paper stays intact!
In the blue and green design, I changed color every 5 loops, dark blue, light blue and green, making quite a pleasing design. There’s lots of room for experimentation, so here are some of my experiments.
If you change color when the pen is in the middle of the ring rather than when it is close to the edge, the color changes are less obvious.
There is a link to a Windows Spirograph package on my web page at
http://mkhometuition.co.uk/index_files/Page592.htm
(click on icon to download zipped file)
Best in 1024 x 768 resolution.
Thanks Mark. People, check this out. It’s a computer spirograph simulation program that accurately generates the patterns in the original Spirograph and more, with detailed explanations of the math behind the curves and the numbers.