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Radius of curvature and center of curvature. In differential geometry, the radius of curvature, R, is the reciprocal of the curvature. For a curve, it equals the radius of the circular arc which best approximates the curve at that point. For surfaces, the radius of curvature is the radius of a circle that best fits a normal section or ...
Historically, the curvature of a differentiable curve was defined through the osculating circle, which is the circle that best approximates the curve at a point. More precisely, given a point P on a curve, every other point Q of the curve defines a circle (or sometimes a line) passing through Q and tangent to the curve at P.
whose tangent at x = a had a slope of so the tangent line would have the equation = + (). Next, he increased a by a small amount to a + ε, making segment AC a relatively good approximation for the length of the curve from A to D.
A double-end Euler spiral. The curve continues to converge to the points marked, as t tends to positive or negative infinity. An Euler spiral is a curve whose curvature changes linearly with its curve length (the curvature of a circular curve is equal to the reciprocal of the radius). This curve is also referred to as a clothoid or Cornu spiral.
Curvature is usually measured in radius of curvature.A small circle can be easily laid out by just using radius of curvature, but degree of curvature is more convenient for calculating and laying out the curve if the radius is as large as a kilometer or mile, as is needed for large scale works like roads and railroads.
A quadratrix in the first quadrant (x, y) is a curve with y = ρ sin θ equal to the fraction of the quarter circle with radius r determined by the radius through the curve point. Since this fraction is 2 r θ π {\displaystyle {\frac {2r\theta }{\pi }}} , the curve is given by ρ ( θ ) = 2 r θ π sin θ {\displaystyle \rho (\theta ...
The arc length of one branch between x = x 1 and x = x 2 is a ln y 1 / y 2 . The area between the tractrix and its asymptote is π a 2 / 2 , which can be found using integration or Mamikon's theorem. The envelope of the normals of the tractrix (that is, the evolute of the tractrix) is the catenary (or chain curve) given by y = a ...
The line with equation ax + by + c = 0 has slope -a/b, so any line perpendicular to it will have slope b/a (the negative reciprocal). Let (m, n) be the point of intersection of the line ax + by + c = 0 and the line perpendicular to it which passes through the point (x 0, y 0). The line through these two points is perpendicular to the original ...