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A compass, also commonly known as a pair of compasses, is a technical drawing instrument that can be used for inscribing circles or arcs. As dividers, it can also be used as a tool to mark out distances, in particular, on maps. Compasses can be used for mathematics, drafting, navigation and other purposes.
The compass can have an arbitrarily large radius with no markings on it (unlike certain real-world compasses). Circles and circular arcs can be drawn starting from two given points: the centre and a point on the circle. The compass may or may not collapse (i.e. fold after being taken off the page, erasing its 'stored' radius).
Live Geometry is a free CodePlex project that lets you create interactive ruler and compass constructions and experiment with them. It is written in Silverlight 4 and C# 4.0 (Visual Studio 2010). The core engine is a flexible and extensible framework that allows easy addition of new figure types and features.
Both of these also require a straight edge, like the standard ruler. [3] When doing constructions in hyperbolic geometry, as long as you are using the proper ruler for the construction, the three compasses (meaning the horocompass, hypercompass, and the standard compass) can all perform the same constructions. [3]
In geometry, the compass equivalence theorem is an important statement in compass and straightedge constructions. The tool advocated by Plato in these constructions is a divider or collapsing compass , that is, a compass that "collapses" whenever it is lifted from a page, so that it may not be directly used to transfer distances.
The Ancient Tradition of Geometric Problems studies the three classical problems of circle-squaring, cube-doubling, and angle trisection throughout the history of Greek mathematics, [1] [2] also considering several other problems studied by the Greeks in which a geometric object with certain properties is to be constructed, in many cases through transformations to other construction problems. [2]
Napoleon's problem is a compass construction problem. In it, a circle and its center are given. The challenge is to divide the circle into four equal arcs using only a compass. [1] [2] Napoleon was known to be an amateur mathematician, but it is not known if he either created or solved the problem.
A variation on the compass, a neusis tool which does not actually exist but as an abstraction, has also been studied. Known as the cyclos, the device draws circles similarly to the compass, but does so not by defining a radius or providing a center, but by two points defining a diameter, or by three non-collinear points defining the arc. In ...