Definition of the Spiral of Archimedes

A detailed tutorial on the Spiral of Archimedes. Step by step tutorial including several visual examples of the Spiral of Archimedes for reference.

The Spiral of Archimedes, also known as the Archimedean Spiral and the arithmetic spiral, is the locus of points corresponding to the locations over time of a point moving away from a fixed point with a constant speed along a line which rotates with constant angular velocity. It is represented by the equation The variable a controls which direction the spiral turns in, and the variable b controls the distance between successive turnings. We would recognize the Spiral of Archimedes as being an ordinary spiral that is often used to express the unexplained in movies and television.

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