Review

• Draw the following shapes

Hint! Try using a loop, inside a loop to alter the pen width

Extension Segregate code for drawing each edge from drawing the regular polygon.

17. Without a computer, write out what numbers are printed in the following code :

for j in range(5):
    print(j)

for x in range(5, 50, 5):
    print(x)

Using for loops with a list of numbers

In the last post we looked at using the range argument to produce sequences of numbers. For example range(5,30,5) will produce 5,10,15,20,25. Note how it does not include the number 30!

What if we want a list of numbers that isn't a pattern? We can do that!

import turtle as tl

edge = 150

for angle in (45, 135, 45, 135):
    tl.forward(edge)
    tl.left(angle)

tl.exitonclick()

will produce

We can also use this to produce patterns in the width like so

import turtle as tl

edge = 150
sides = 6

for _ in range(sides):
    for current_width in (2,4,8,4,2):
        tl.width(current_width)
        tl.forward(edge/5)
    tl.left(360 / sides)

tl.exitonclick()

will produce

In both examples we have used a list of numbers, known as a tuple. This can be stored in a variable too.

import turtle as tl

edge = 150
sides = 6
widths = (2,4,8,4,2)

for _ in range(sides):
    for current_width in widths:
        tl.width(current_width)
        tl.forward(edge / len(widths))
    tl.left(360 / sides)

tl.exitonclick()

Note how here we have used len(widths). This returns the length, the number of items, in the list widths. Using such things we can design ever more complicated patterns!

Exercise Set 1

Draw the following patterns

Introducing Colour

In Turtle we can use colours in two ways.

1. The pen colour - what colour the lines we draw will be
2. The fill colour - what colour closed shapes will be filled with

Let's consider pen colour first. Here is a triangle with three different colours.

import turtle as tl

tl.colormode(255)
tl.width(10)

step = 200
angle = 120

colours = ((255,0,0), (0,255,0), (0,0,255))  # red, green then blue

for colour in colours:
    tl.color(colour)
    tl.forward(step)
    tl.left(angle)

tl.exitonclick()

Here we have introduced two new methods - colormode and color. colormode tells turtle that each colour red, green and blue, gets a number from 0 to 255. color tells turtle what colour to set the pen. This is given as (red, green, blue).

For example, (255, 255, 255) is all colours turned to maximum which is white. (0,0,0) is all colours set to minimum, which is black.

Summary

In this class we have explored further properties of turtle including how computers use colour.