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Purpose
Purpose
Have you ever wanted to flip a pancake, but don’t know how? Have you then tried and failed without knowing why? This is what the Pancake Flipper project seeks to remedy.
The Perfect Pancake Flip is a simple way for any chef, professional or at-home-amateur, to visualize the motion of their pan when they flip a pancake, and with this, be able to improve their technique for the Perfect Pancake Flip.
Figure 1
Motion Model
Motion Model
Our motion model has three degrees of freedom, motion in the Y and Z axes, and rotation in the X axis. We are using these values to get the position of the pan throughout time, and comparing the Frequency Fourier Transforms (FFTs) of our perfect toss and our trial toss to determine how close a given toss is to our Perfect Pancake Flip.
We also talk about the forces created by the pan that create the actual pancake toss, and how these create different frequencies that can determine if the pancake will launch and flip or not. Below we can see the FFT graphs of both the Y and Z axes below, and how they have one higher frequency and a "triangle shape" around it, showing the frequencies are not perfect, but they are very marked.
Figure 2
Figure 3
How It Works
How It Works
Collect data from a flip attempt
Apply Fourier Transform to obtain average frequencies at each timestep
Obtain positions from the collected data and plot the results
Animate the results using Matlab
Results
Results
At the end of our calculations, we animate our "perfect toss" against our trial toss, with the color being determined by the frequency analysis. To the right you can see a trial toss that failed to flip a pancake, and a perfect toss that did.
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