Jules Antoine Lissajous (; 4 March 1822 in
Versailles
The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, ...
– 24 June 1880 in
Plombières-les-Dijon) was a French
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
, after whom
Lissajous figures are named. Among other innovations, Lissajous invented the Lissajous apparatus, a device that creates the figures that bear his name. In it, a beam of light is bounced off a mirror attached to a vibrating
tuning fork
A tuning fork is an acoustic resonator in the form of a two-pronged fork with the prongs ( tines) formed from a U-shaped bar of elastic metal (usually steel). It resonates at a specific constant pitch when set vibrating by striking it agains ...
, and then reflected off a second mirror attached to a perpendicularly oriented vibrating tuning fork (usually of a different
pitch, creating a specific harmonic interval), onto a wall, resulting in a Lissajous figure. This led to the invention of other apparatus such as the
harmonograph
A harmonograph is a mechanical apparatus that employs pendulums to create a geometric image. The drawings created typically are Lissajous curves or related drawings of greater complexity. The devices, which began to appear in the mid-19th century ...
.
See also
*
Lissajous curve
A Lissajous curve , also known as Lissajous figure or Bowditch curve , is the graph of a system of parametric equations
: x=A\sin(at+\delta),\quad y=B\sin(bt),
which describe the superposition of two perpendicular oscillations in x and y dire ...
*
Lissajous orbit
In orbital mechanics, a Lissajous orbit (), named after Jules Antoine Lissajous, is a quasi-periodic orbital trajectory that an object can follow around a Lagrangian point of a three-body system without requiring any propulsion. Lyapunov orbi ...
References
External links
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1822 births
1880 deaths
19th-century French mathematicians
Lycée Hoche alumni
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