The Slinky

Surely you're familiar with the popular children's toy Slinky: tightly wrapped metal or plastic spirals that, with a small push, you can send “walking” down stairs. We will model and then animate one in this example.

Description of Tasks

The spiral “walks” by first leaning over the edge of the first step. It is then pulled by gravity and its own weight down to the next step. The portion of the spiral that is pulled behind at the end receives, due to inertia, a forward impulse; it therefore pulls the spiral farther over the edge in the direction of the second step. So the spiral moves fluidly forward until the very last step has been conquered.

Thus we are dealing with the bending of the spiral—it must cover a distance over the edge ...

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