The Archimedean spiral (also known as the arithmetic spiral) is a spiral named after the 3rd century BC Greek mathematician Archimedes. It 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. Equivalently, in polar coordinates (r, θ) it can be described by the equation
with real numbers a and b. Changing the parameter a will turn the spiral, while b controls the distance between successive turnings.
Archimedes described such a spiral in his book On Spirals.
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