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This curve will in general have different curvatures for different normal planes at p. The principal curvatures at p, denoted k 1 and k 2, are the maximum and minimum values of this curvature. Here the curvature of a curve is by definition the reciprocal of the radius of the osculating circle. The curvature is taken to be positive if the curve ...
The normal curvature, k n, is the curvature of the curve projected onto the plane containing the curve's tangent T and the surface normal u; the geodesic curvature, k g, is the curvature of the curve projected onto the surface's tangent plane; and the geodesic torsion (or relative torsion), τ r, measures the rate of change of the surface ...
The two principal curvatures at p are the maximum and minimum possible values of the curvature of this plane curve at p, as the plane under consideration rotates around the normal line. The following summarizes the calculation of the above quantities relative to a Monge patch f(u, v) = (u, v, h(u, v)).
The evolute will have a cusp at the center of the circle. The sign of the second derivative of curvature determines whether the curve has a local minimum or maximum of curvature. All closed curves will have at least four vertices, two minima and two maxima (the four-vertex theorem). In general a curve will not have 4th-order contact with any ...
The four-vertex theorem was first proved for convex curves (i.e. curves with strictly positive curvature) in 1909 by Syamadas Mukhopadhyaya. [8] His proof utilizes the fact that a point on the curve is an extremum of the curvature function if and only if the osculating circle at that point has fourth-order contact with the curve; in general the osculating circle has only third-order contact ...
Through each tangent vector to M at p, there passes a normal plane P X which cuts out a curve in M. That curve has a certain curvature κ X when regarded as a curve inside P X . Provided not all κ X are equal, there is some unit vector X 1 for which k 1 = κ X 1 is as large as possible, and another unit vector X 2 for which k 2 = κ X 2 is as ...
If, moreover, the curvature has a non-zero local maximum or minimum at P then the osculating circle touches the curve C at P but does not cross it. The curve C may be obtained as the envelope of the one-parameter family of its osculating circles. Their centers, i.e. the centers of curvature, form another curve, called the evolute of C.
Low-order polynomials tend to be smooth and high order polynomial curves tend to be "lumpy". To define this more precisely, the maximum number of inflection points possible in a polynomial curve is n-2, where n is the order of the polynomial equation. An inflection point is a location on the curve where it switches from a positive radius to ...