FrisbeeThe MAΘ Frisbee

Prof. Paul Yiu (FAU) designed the MAΘ event frisbee based on a geometric figure called arbelos which means shoemaker's knife in Greek. This term is applied to the blue figure below which resembles the blade of a knife used by ancient cobblers.

Arbelos

Frisbee Lower Half
Archimedes is believed to have been the first mathematician to study the properties of the arbelos. In his Book of Lemmas he proved that the two circles labeled "MAΘ" and "2007" on our frisbee have the same size. This is always true no matter where we place the central notch of the arbelos. These two tangent circles are called the Archimedean Twin Circles.

Frisbee Uppder Half


In the upper half of the frisbee an arbelos is used again. Here, a chain of tangent circles is constructed inside the three semicircles forming the arbelos. This chain of circles is called the Pappus Chain.





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