Curriculum design · UT Austin RET

Making math visible through pendulum art.

What happens when a pendulum can swing in two directions? A trail of paint turns motion into a pattern students can see, investigate, and create.

Two directions of motion, one continuous path. An idealized mathematical illustration.

From motion to a visible pattern

A simple pendulum swings back and forth. Give it a second direction of motion and the combination can trace loops called Lissajous patterns. In this activity, paint makes that path visible.

Students design, build, test, and refine their own pendulums. The published lesson connects those interacting oscillations to a simplified model of the signals biomedical engineers study.

Faith’s contribution

Faith co-authored Pendulum Art: Simple Harmonic Motion with a TWIST! with Tanima Mukherjee. The lesson grew from the UT Austin Research Experience for Teachers program and is published on TeachEngineering.

The curriculum guides students from an initial design through measurement and revision. Worksheets help them relate pendulum length, frequency, and the pattern left on the page.

What students take away

The artwork is an invitation to ask better questions. Why did this pattern change? How well did our measurements match our prediction? What should we adjust in the next design?

Those questions connect mathematical models with physical experiments—and give students a reason to return to the equations.

Published work

Explore the full lesson

Find the complete activity, student packet, and demonstration videos on TeachEngineering.

Read Pendulum Art

Curriculum contributors: Faith Palombi and Tanima Mukherjee.