Tractional motion machines: tangent-managing planar mechanisms as analog computers and educational artifacts

  • Authors:

  • Pietro Milici

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Palermo, Italy

  • Venue:
  • UCNC'12 Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Unconventional Computation and Natural Computation
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Concrete and virtual machines play a central role in the both Unconventional Computing (machines as computers) and in Math Education (influence of artifacts on reaching/producing abstract thought). Here we will examine some fallouts in these fields for the Tractional Motion Machines, planar mechanisms based on some devices used to plot the solutions of differential equations by the management of the tangent since the late 17th century.