Siteswap
Siteswap, also called quantum juggling or the Cambridge notation, is a numeric juggling notation used to describe or represent juggling patterns. Throws are represented by positive integers that specify the number of beats in the future when the object is thrown again. Each pattern repeats after a certain number of throws, called the period of the pattern.
About Siteswap in brief
Siteswap, also called quantum juggling or the Cambridge notation, is a numeric juggling notation used to describe or represent juggling patterns. Throws are represented by positive integers that specify the number of beats in the future when the object is thrown again. The notation was invented by Paul Klimek in Santa Cruz, California in 1981, and later developed by undergraduates Bruce Tiemann and Bengt Magnusson at the California Institute of Technology in 1985. It is an invaluable tool in determining which combinations of throws yield valid juggling patterns for a given number of objects, and has led to previously unknown patterns. It does not describe body movements such as behind-the-back and under- the-leg. The name siteswap comes from the ability to generate patterns by swapping the landing times of any 2 \”sites\” in a Siteswap using the swap property. Each pattern repeats after a certain number of throws, called the period of the pattern. All patterns must therefore have a sequence that averages to an integer. Not all patterns describe all such sequences; for example, 543 with its average of 441 is a three-object pattern because 3 is 3, 86 is a seven-object, and 86 is 86. For example, the pattern diagrammed on the right is 53145305520 which has 11 digits and therefore a period of 11. If the period is an odd number, like this one, then each the sequence starts with the same hand, and the pattern is symmetrical because each hand is doing the same thing.
On every pattern, each hand does every thing the last thing did the same time and it is asymmetrical. The number of balls used for the pattern for the average is the average of the numbers in the throw numbers. A 3 represents a throw to the opposite hand at the height of the basic three-cascade; a 4 represents athrow to the same hands at theheight of the four-fountain, and so on. There are three special throws: a 0 is a pause with an empty hand, a 1 is a quick pass straight across to the other hand and a 2 is a momentary hold of an object. The first throw in the diagram is a purple ball thrown in the air by the right hand, next the blue ball, the green ball again, and then finally the purple ball is caught and thrown by the left hand on the fifth throw, this gives the first throw a count of 5. This produces a sequence of numbers which denote the height of each throw to be made. Since hands alternate, odd-numbered throws send the ball to theOther hand, while even- numbered throws send it to theSame hand. Throws longer than 9 beats are given letters starting with a. The number corresponds to how high it was thrown, so many people refer to the numbers as heights, but this is not technically correct; all that matters is how high the ball was thrown.
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This page is based on the article Siteswap published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
