Devices to Illustrate Lissajous Figures

摘要

Longtime readers of The Physics Teacher will have noted my interest in oscillations and waves. In particular, Lissajous figures, which are the resultant of two simple harmonic motions at right angles to each other, have fascinated me since I first saw a device drawing them at Amherst College in 1957. In this paper I want to show some of the apparatus that has been developed to display Lissajous figures; some of these can be reproduced fairly easily today.