A tautochrone is a curve down where a bead will slide to the bottom under the influence of gravity in the same amount of time regardless of where you initially place it. Huygens was first to prove that such a curve is an arc of an inverted cycloid.1
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A. Sommerfeld, Mechanics (Academic Press, New York, 1952).
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© 2005 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2005
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