¶ Rubber Tires (1)
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Rubber Tires:
"You can make this model out of little automobile tires and you can run them up on the shaft and use tape to act as a thrust bearing to keep them from coming outwardly. You brought them in until each of these tires are barely touching the other tires in three points-- so it really is a triangle.
"Remember how gears work. We have a train of gears where around any hole there are always four gears, so as this wheel goes one way the other wheel can go that way very comfortably. And since there are four we find that the trains reciprocate. There is no blocking anywhere. All of the holes are four-sided so it is an even-numbered train of gears. When I rotate one wheel in this whole system all the other wheels move very neatly. They are in friction to one another. I can also hold on to one of the wheels and turn the system around it. If I do that a very interesting thing happens. … A rubber tire can be mounted like a torus, or can be rotated outwardly like the big atomic bomb mushroom cloud-- opening in the center and coming in at the bottom. That is what we call an evolving or involuting torus. These rubber tires could do that-- and not only could they rotate around on each other this way, but it is quite possible to make
¶ Citations
- Oregon Lecture, #7, p. 262, 11 Jul’62
