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A Zindler curve is a
simple Simple or SIMPLE may refer to: *Simplicity, the state or quality of being simple Arts and entertainment * ''Simple'' (album), by Andy Yorke, 2008, and its title track * "Simple" (Florida Georgia Line song), 2018 * "Simple", a song by Johnn ...
closed plane
curve In mathematics, a curve (also called a curved line in older texts) is an object similar to a line, but that does not have to be straight. Intuitively, a curve may be thought of as the trace left by a moving point. This is the definition that ...
with the defining property that: :(L) All
chords Chord may refer to: * Chord (music), an aggregate of musical pitches sounded simultaneously ** Guitar chord a chord played on a guitar, which has a particular tuning * Chord (geometry), a line segment joining two points on a curve * Chord ( ...
, which cut the curve length into halves, have the same length. The most simple examples are
circle A circle is a shape consisting of all points in a plane that are at a given distance from a given point, the centre. Equivalently, it is the curve traced out by a point that moves in a plane so that its distance from a given point is con ...
s. The Austrian mathematician Konrad Zindler discovered further examples, and gave a method to construct them.
Herman Auerbach Herman Auerbach (October 26, 1901, Tarnopol – August 17, 1942) was a Polish mathematician and member of the Lwów School of Mathematics. Auerbach was professor at Lwów University. During the Second World War because of his Jewish descent he ...
was the first, who used (in 1938) the now established name ''Zindler curve''. Auerbach proved that a figure bounded by a Zindler curve and with half the density of water will float in water in any position. This gives a negative answer to the bidimensional version of Stanislaw Ulam's problem on floating bodies (Problem 19 of the Scottish Book), which asks if the disk is the only figure of uniform density which will float in water in any position (the original problem asks if the sphere is the only solid having this property in three dimension). Zindler curves are also connected to the problem of establishing if it is possible to determine the direction of the motion of a bicycle given only the closed rear and front tracks.


Equivalent definitions

An equivalent definition of a Zindler curve is the following one: :(A) All
chords Chord may refer to: * Chord (music), an aggregate of musical pitches sounded simultaneously ** Guitar chord a chord played on a guitar, which has a particular tuning * Chord (geometry), a line segment joining two points on a curve * Chord ( ...
, which cut the ''area'' into halves, have the same length. These chords are the same, which cut the curve length into halves. Another definition is based on Zindler carousels of two chairs. Consider two smooth curves in R² given by λ1 and λ2. Suppose that the distance between points λ1(t) and λ2(t) are constant for each ''t'' ∈ R and that the curve defined by the midpoints between λ1 and λ2 is such that its tangent vector at the point ''t'' is parallel to the segment from λ1(''t'') to λ2(''t'') for each ''t''. If the curves λ1 and λ2 parametrizes the same smooth closed curve, then this curve is a Zindler curve.


Examples

Consider a fixed real parameter a. For a>4, any of the curves :z(u)= x(u) +iy(u)=e^+2e^ +ae^\; , \ u\in ,4\pi; , is a Zindler curve.W. Wunderlich: ''Algebraische Beispiele ebener und räumlicher Zindler-Kurven''. Publ. Math. Debrecen 24 (1977), 289–297.(S. 291). For a\ge 24 the curve is even ''convex''. The diagram shows curves for a=8 (blue), a=16 (green) and a=24 (red). For a\ge 8 the curves are related to a
curve of constant width In geometry, a curve of constant width is a simple closed curve in the plane whose width (the distance between parallel supporting lines) is the same in all directions. The shape bounded by a curve of constant width is a body of constant width ...
. ''Proof of (L):'' The derivative of the parametric equation is : z'(u)=i\Big(2e^-2e^ +\frace^\Big) \; and : , z'(u), ^2=z'(u)\overline= \cdots =8+\frac-8\cos 3u \; . , z'(u), is 2\pi- periodic. Hence for any u_0 the following equation holds : \int_^ , z'(u), \, du = \int_0^ , z'(u), \,du \; , which is half the length of the entire curve. The desired chords, which divide the curve into halves are bounded by the points \;z(u_0)\; ,\;z(u_0+2\pi)\; for any u_0 \in ,4\pi/math>. The length of such a chord is , z(u_0+2\pi)-z(u_0), = \cdots =, 2ae^, =2a \; , hence independent of u_0. ∎ For a=4 the desired chords meet the curve in an additional point (see Figure 3). Hence only for a>4 the sample curves are Zindler curves.


Generalizations

The property defining Zindler curves can also be generalized to chords that cut the perimeter of the curve in a fixed ratio α different from 1/2. In this case, one may consider a chord system (a continuous selection of chords) instead of all chords of the curve. These curves are known as α-Zindler curves, and are Zindler curves for α = 1/2. This generalization of Zindler curve has the following property related to the floating problem: let γ be a closed smooth curve with a chord system cutting the perimeter in a fixed ratio α. If all the chords of this chord system are in the interior of the region bounded by γ, then γ is a α-Zindler curve if and only if the region bounded by γ is a solid of uniform density ρ that floats in any orientation.


See also

*
Curve of constant width In geometry, a curve of constant width is a simple closed curve in the plane whose width (the distance between parallel supporting lines) is the same in all directions. The shape bounded by a curve of constant width is a body of constant width ...
*
Reuleaux polygon In geometry, a Reuleaux polygon is a curve of constant width made up of circular arcs of constant radius. These shapes are named after their prototypical example, the Reuleaux triangle, which in turn, is named after 19th-century German engineer ...


Notes


References

* Herman Auerbach:
Sur un problème de M. Ulam concernant l’équilibre des corps flottants
(PDF; 796 kB)'', Studia Mathematica 7 (1938), 121–142. * K. L. Mampel:
Über Zindlerkurven
', Journal für reine und angewandte Mathematik 234 (1969), 12–44. * Konrad Zindler: ''Über konvexe Gebilde. II. Teil'', Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik 31 (1921), 25–56. * H. Martini, S. Wu: ''On Zindler Curves in Normed Planes'', Canadian Mathematical Bulletin 55 (2012), 767–773. * J. Bracho, L. Montejano, D. Oliveros: ''Carousels, Zindler curves and the floating body problem'', Periodica Mathematica Hungarica 49 (2004), 9–23. * P. M. Gruber, J.M. Wills: ''Convexity and Its Applications'', Springer, 1983, {{ISBN, 978-3-0348-5860-1, p. 58.


External links

* http://www.thphys.uni-heidelberg.de/~wegner/Fl2mvs/Movies.html - A page by Franz Wegner illustrating some bodies that float in any direction. * https://www.rose-hulman.edu/~finn/research/bicycle/tracks.html - A page by David L. Finn illustrating some pair of curves which is not possible to determine which one is the rear or the front track of a bicycle. Plane curves