Lissajous Figures - C Program

In this post I will show you how to calculate and plot the Lissajous Curves using C and Gnuplot.
We will use the following information:
$x=\sin\theta$
$y=A\sin(n\theta + \delta)$
We will create a program that calculates the values of the x and y for various $\theta$ values and for different n and store these values in a txt file. Then just plot it using Gnuplot.
We will create two functions called ‘x’ and ‘y’, that contain the definition of x and y respectively.

PROGRAM:

/************************************
********LISSAJOUS FIGURES **********
************************************/
#include<stdio.h>
#include<math.h>
double x(double theta){
	return sin(theta);
}
double y(double theta, double A,double n, double delta){
	return A*sin(n*theta+delta);
}
main(){
	double theta;
	FILE *fp=NULL;
	double A,n,delta;
	fp=fopen("lissajous.txt","w");
	/*Loop to calculate and store data-points*/
	for(theta=0;theta<=4*M_PI;theta=theta+0.01){
		/*Change A, n or delta here*/
		A=1;
		n=3;
		delta=M_PI/4;
		fprintf(fp,"%lf\t%lf\n",x(theta),y(theta,A,n,delta));
	}
}

When you run the above C, it will generate a file called ‘lissajous.txt’ which would contain 2 columns of data-points.
The first column contains the ‘x’ values and the next one is for ‘y’ values.
These can be easily plotted using Gnuplot by using the following commands:

GnuPlot Command

plot 'lissajous.txt' w l

OUTPUT

For different values of $\delta ,A ; n$ the output looks as follows:
$A=1 ; n=1 ; \delta=\pi/4$

$A=1 ; n=2 ; \delta =\pi/4$

$A=1; n=2.5 ; \delta =\pi/4$

$A=1; n=2 ; \delta =\pi/2$

$A=1 ; n=2; \delta = \pi$

$A=2 ; n=2; \delta = \pi$

Resources:

https://academo.org/demos/lissajous-curves/

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Manas Sharma

I’m a physicist specializing in computational material science with a PhD in Physics from Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, Germany. I write efficient codes for simulating light-matter interactions at atomic scales. I like to develop Physics, DFT, and Machine Learning related apps and software from time to time. Can code in most of the popular languages. I like to share my knowledge in Physics and applications using this Blog and a YouTube channel.

manas.bragitoff.com/