Discussion of Penguin Analysis Results

Linear motion of the penguin's body;

Angular motion of the penguin's wings:

Linear motion of the penguin's wingtips:

The shapes of the positional curves follow the expected paths, as they reflect the slow ascent, steep drop, and momentary rest at the end of the cycle. The velocity curves reveal the more subtle behavior of the penguin during its ascent, as the velocity increases to a peak, then decreases slightly before plummeting down. The acceleration, on the other hand, is linear over this interval due to the cubic polynomial for position from which it was differentiated. The acceleration is very large in the negative direction once the penguin begins to drop, but it decreases in magnitude as the angle increases further, due to the cosine wave that models the body's vertical position over this range.

The magnitudes of quantities calculated in this analysis are approximately the expected values based on the physical model. The penguin itself reaches just over 2 cm from its resting position, while its wings appear to reach an obtuse angle somewhere above 135 degrees from the vertical downward position, and are at rest around 45 degrees from the downward position. As discussed, the large negative velocity in descent, compared against the small positive velocity in ascent, matches the expected behavior. The wingtips have a much wider range of motion than the body. This also matches the behavior of the physical model, as the wings act as long levers that amplify any vertical movement of the body.

Each category (positional, velocity, acceleration) appears to be shaped similarly between each step of the analysis. This occurs because the velocity and acceleration are the same between the linear and angular analyses, just multiplies by constants that scale magnitude. The position undergoes the most visible change in shape, as the angle of the wings is related to the tangent of the inverse of the linear position of the body. As a result, the angular position of the wings and the linear position of the wingtips both begin to level off as the penguin approaches the top of its range of motion.

The physical model of the mechanism deviates from these results due to the flexible nature of the material used. The points of the cam could not fully support the weight of the penguin body. As a result, the tips of the cam flex to the sides when the point supporting the penguin becomes narrower. Thus, the body of the physical model never reaches its theoretical peak position.