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Sixty Wheels is a Windows application for illustrating the concepts of Fourier Series,
Fourier Transformation, Fourier Analysis, and Harmonic Analysis. The application provides 60
turning wheels which can be connected to each other in turn at a point on their perimeter.
The radii, phase and turning speed can be set for each wheel. When viewed as a complex plane,
the obtained model closely resembles a Harmonic Phasor. The side view of the turning wheels
is displayed separately so that its 'real' (or 'imaginary') component is shown. The path
followed by the side view is plotted against time on a graph. Optionally, you can draw a periodic waveform directly on the graph. At the click of a button the program will calculate the properties of the wheels necessary to reproduce the graph! Some presets with interesting signals are included. Additionally, for those nolstalgic engineers, a representation of a mechanical harmonic analyser is included to show how harmonic analysis was done in the old days before computers. The program is absolutely free for anyone to download. It is especially useful for educational purposes. Please send me an e-mail with your comments and/or suggestions. There is no user manual, so just feel free to experiment to discover its capabilities. The downloadable file is an executable in a zip file. Just download the zip file, extract the executable and start it up. (Click this link with the right mouse button and select "Save Target As") download latest version of Sixty Wheels |
