Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In geometry, a spherical cap or spherical dome is a portion of a sphere or of a ball cut off by a plane. It is also a spherical segment of one base, i.e., bounded by a single plane. If the plane passes through the center of the sphere (forming a great circle), so that the height of the cap is equal to the radius of the sphere, the spherical cap ...
The sphere has the smallest surface area of all surfaces that enclose a given volume, and it encloses the largest volume among all closed surfaces with a given surface area. [11] The sphere therefore appears in nature: for example, bubbles and small water drops are roughly spherical because the surface tension locally minimizes surface area.
For example, one sphere that is described in Cartesian coordinates with the equation x 2 + y 2 + z 2 = c 2 can be described in spherical coordinates by the simple equation r = c. (In this system—shown here in the mathematics convention—the sphere is adapted as a unit sphere, where the radius is set to unity and then can generally be ignored ...
Spherical trigonometry is the branch of spherical geometry that deals with the metrical relationships between the sides and angles of spherical triangles, traditionally expressed using trigonometric functions. On the sphere, geodesics are great circles. Spherical trigonometry is of great importance for calculations in astronomy, geodesy, and ...
In a small triangle on the face of the earth, the sum of the angles is only slightly more than 180 degrees. A sphere with a spherical triangle on it. Spherical geometry or spherics (from Ancient Greek σφαιρικά) is the geometry of the two- dimensional surface of a sphere [a] or the n -dimensional surface of higher dimensional spheres.
The solid angle of a sphere measured from any point in its interior is 4 π sr, and the solid angle subtended at the center of a cube by one of its faces is one-sixth of that, or 2 π /3 sr. Solid angles can also be measured in square degrees (1 sr = (180/ π) 2 square degrees), in square arc-minutes and square arc-seconds, or in fractions of ...
Intersection of a sphere and cone emanating from its center. A spherical sector (blue) A spherical sector. In geometry, a spherical sector, [1] also known as a spherical cone, [2] is a portion of a sphere or of a ball defined by a conical boundary with apex at the center of the sphere. It can be described as the union of a spherical cap and the ...
The formula for the surface area of a sphere is more difficult to derive: because a sphere has nonzero Gaussian curvature, it cannot be flattened out. The formula for the surface area of a sphere was first obtained by Archimedes in his work On the Sphere and Cylinder. The formula is: [6] A = 4πr 2 (sphere), where r is the radius of the sphere.