IP Topics

Pythagorean Cup

This is a 3D printed Pythagorean cup, otherwise known as a greedy cup, where if one pours far too much water or wine or whatever your greedy heart desires, all the contents in the cup will leak out through the bottom.

This is based on the design by “jsteuben” on Thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:123252). The siphoning effect kicks in when the water level is above the internal “tube” printed and hidden into the walls of the cup.

I printed another cup based on a more conventional design as well, but due to the wrong settings given when I prepared the gcode file, the cup was rather leaky when the water level was low. This design by “MonzaMakers” has a protruding siphon tube. (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:562790)

Explaining how the siphon works is easier with the second cup. When the water level is lower than the highest point in the siphoning tube, it remains in the cup. When it exceeds the highest point of the tube, water begins to flow down the part of the tube leading to the opening at the bottom of the cup. The falling water column creates a suction effect and continuously draws the rest of the water in, until the cup is dry.

Longitudinal and Transverse Waves

I modified Tom Walsh’s original GeoGebra app to add a moveable single oscillating particle for students to observe its movement along a longitudinal wave and a transverse wave.

The app can also be used to show how the displacement of a particle in a longitudinal wave can be mapped onto a sinusoidal function, similar to the shape of a transverse wave. For example. a displacement of the particle to the right can be represented by a positive displacement value on the displacement-distance graph.

You can choose to select the particle that you want to focus on by using the slider.

For a full screen view, visit https://www.geogebra.org/m/auyft2pd

Here is an animated gif for those who prefer to insert it into a powerpoint slideshow instead:

Animation of longitudinal wave and transverse wave

For embedding into SLS or any platform that supports iframes.

<iframe scrolling="no" title="Progressive Waves" src="https://www.geogebra.org/material/iframe/id/auyft2pd/width/640/height/480/border/888888/sfsb/true/smb/false/stb/false/stbh/false/ai/false/asb/false/sri/true/rc/false/ld/false/sdz/false/ctl/false" width="640px" height="480px" style="border:0px;"> </iframe>