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The inverse of the curve C is then the locus of P as Q runs over C. The point O in this construction is called the center of inversion, the circle the circle of inversion, and k the radius of inversion. An inversion applied twice is the identity transformation, so the inverse of an inverse curve with respect to the same circle is the original ...
P ' is the inverse of P with respect to the circle. To invert a number in arithmetic usually means to take its reciprocal. A closely related idea in geometry is that of "inverting" a point. In the plane, the inverse of a point P with respect to a reference circle (Ø) with center O and radius r is a point P ', lying on the ray from O through P ...
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 combinations thereof. [1] [2] [3]
For curves, the canonical example is that of a circle, which has a curvature equal to the reciprocal of its radius. Smaller circles bend more sharply, and hence have higher curvature. The curvature at a point of a differentiable curve is the curvature of its osculating circle — that is, the circle that best approximates the curve near this ...
A detailed consideration shows: The midpoints of the circles lie on the perimeter of the fixed generator circle. (The generator circle is the inverse curve of the parabola's directrix.) This property gives rise to the following simple method to draw a cardioid: Choose a circle and a point on its perimeter,
Some authors modify this formula by taking the inverse hyperbolic cosine of the value given above, rather than the value itself. [ 2 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] That is, rather than using the number I {\displaystyle I} as the inversive distance, the distance is instead defined as the number δ {\displaystyle \delta } obeying the equation
Or, "the arc whose cosine is x" is the same as "the angle whose cosine is x", because the length of the arc of the circle in radii is the same as the measurement of the angle in radians. [5] In computer programming languages, the inverse trigonometric functions are often called by the abbreviated forms asin, acos, atan. [6]
The circle with center at Q and with radius R is called the osculating circle to the curve γ at the point P. If C is a regular space curve then the osculating circle is defined in a similar way, using the principal normal vector N. It lies in the osculating plane, the plane spanned by the tangent and principal normal vectors T and N at the ...