Watt's Curve - Form of The Curve

Form of The Curve

The construction requires a quadrilateral with sides 2a, b, 2c, b. Any side must be less than the sum of the remaining sides, so the curve is empty (at least in the real plane) unless a<b+c and c<b+a.

The has a crossing point at the origin if there is a triangle with sides a, b and c. Given the previous conditions, this means that the curve crosses the origin if and only if b<a+c. If b=a+c then two branches of the curve meet at the origin with a common vertical tangent, making it a quadruple point.

Given b<a+c, the shape of the curve is determined by the relative magnitude of b and d. If d is imaginary, that is if a2+b2=<c2 then the curve has fthe form of a figure eight. If d is 0 then the curve is a figure eight with two branches of the curve having a common horizontal tangent at the origin. If 0<d<b then the curve has two additional double points at ±d and the curve crosses itself at these points. The overall shape of the curve is pretzel-like in this case. If d=b then a=c and the curve decomposes into a circle of radius b and a lemniscate of Booth, a figure eight shaped curve. A special case of this is a=c, b=√2c which produces the lemniscate of Bernoulli. Finally, if d>b then the points ±d are still solutions to the Cartesian equation of the curve, but the curve does not cross these points and they are acnodes. The curve again has a figure eight shape though the shape is distorted if d is close to b.

Given b>a+c, the shape of the curve is determined by the relative sizes of a and c. If a<c then the curve has the form of two loops that cross each other at ±d. If a=c then the curve decomposes into a circle of radius b and an oval of Booth. If a>c then the curve does not cross the x-axis at all and consists of two flattened ovals.