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Anamorphoscopes another look at circle inverting mirrors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

John Sharp
Affiliation:
London Knowledge Laboratory, Institute of Education, 23-29 Emerald Street, London WC1 3QS, e-mail:sliceforms@yahoo.co.uk
B. G. Nickel
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, University of Guelph, Guelph ON N1G 2W1, Canada, e-mails:phyjlh@physics.uoguelph.ca; bgn@physics.uoguelph.ca
J. L. Hunt
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, University of Guelph, Guelph ON N1G 2W1, Canada, e-mails:phyjlh@physics.uoguelph.ca; bgn@physics.uoguelph.ca

Extract

In 1979 Philip W. Kuchel published a paper [1] in the Mathematical Gazette on using curved mirrors as a means of demonstrating the transformation known as inversion in a circle. He called the mirrors ‘anamorphoscopes’ since he came to the idea as a special case of the conical mirror anamorphosis which was a popular optical toy from the seventeenth century onwards [2]. In this paper we revisit his ideas with current technology and provide some extensions to Kuchel's derivation.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 2011

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References

1. Kuchel, Philip W., Anamorphoscopes: a visual aid for circle inversion, Math. Gaz. 63 (June 1979), pp. 8289.Google Scholar
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