Solar Mirror Yo-Yo ...

[David Morris]

I'd say your "Harmonic Motion" animation link below was what Pynchon meant in the Sun-mirror passage, but his description is still flawed.  Once the orbiting planet passed through the line of the mirror it would disappear.  The yo-yo that one sees in the animation is the result of both sides of orbit through the mirror-line registering on the mirror.  Nice link though.

DM

From: Dave Monroe
.. but that solar mirror yo-yo thing DOES work, and I've
posted some sites with graphics demonstrating as much already, but I
realize I didn't make that explicit, at least for the non-mathematical,
so ... now, imagine that the center point is the sun, the red ball is
the planet going around the sun, and the horizontal line is the mirror.
Follow the bouncing blue ball, i.e., the mirrored reflection of the red
ball ...

http://members.nbci.com/Surendranath/Shm/Shm01.html___________________________________________________________
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