A Brachistochrone curve, or curve of fastest descent, is the curve between two points that is covered in the least time by a body that starts at the first point with zero speed and passes down along the curve to the second point, under the action of constant gravity and ignoring friction.

The brachistochrone is the cycloid

Given two points A and B, with A not lower than B, there is just one upside down cycloid that passes through A with infinite slope and also passes through B. This is the brachistochrone curve. The brachistochrone thus does not depend on the body's mass or on the strength of the gravitational constant.

The problem can be solved with the tools from the calculus of variations.

Note that if the body is given an initial velocity at A, or if friction is taken into account, the curve that minimizes time will differ from the one described above.

History

Galileo incorrectly stated in 1638 in his Discourse on two new sciences that this curve was an arc of a circle. Johann Bernoulli solved the problem (by reference to the previously analysed tautochrone curve) before posing it to readers of Acta Eruditorum in June 1696. Five mathematicians responded with solutions: Isaac Newton, Jakob Bernoulli (Johann's brother), Gottfried Leibniz and Guillaume François Antoine de l'Hôpital. Four of the solutions (excluding l'Hôpital's) were published in the May 1697 edition of the same publication.

In an attempt to outdo his brother, Jakob Bernoulli created a harder version of the brachistochrone problem. In solving it, he developed new methods that were refined by Leonhard Euler into what the latter called (in 1766) the calculus of variations. Joseph-Louis de Lagrange did further work that resulted in modern infinitesimal calculus.

Another rivalry, between Newton and Leibniz, also contributed to this development. Each claimed to have solved the brachistochrone problem before the other, and they continued to quarrel over their subsequent work on the calculus.

Etymology

In Greek, brachistos means "shortest" and chronos means "time". Note that there is no "y" in the Greek root, so "brachystochrone", while rather common, is a spelling mistake.

See also

• Calculus of variations
• List of mathematical topics
• Tautochrone curve
• Timeline of mathematics

External links

• Iagsoft's "Brachistochrone Construction" (Java applet)
• [1] (in French but has an excellent animated illustration)