AI for Poets · Toy

Spirograph

A ring pinned to the paper, a toothed wheel rolling around it, a pen in one of the wheel's holes. The ring and wheel sit on the page at left; change a setting and watch them change, then press draw and the gears do the mathematics.

Settings
How it works. The ring's tooth count and the wheel's tooth count share a common divisor, and that divisor decides everything: how many points the star has, and how many times the wheel must travel around before the pen returns to its start. Tooth counts with few common factors (a 63 wheel in a 96 ring) take many revolutions and weave dense lace; counts that divide evenly (48 in 96) close after a single loop. The pen hole doesn't change the symmetry — only how far the curve swings.

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