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A straight line can intersect a circle at zero, one, or two points. A line with intersections at two points is called a secant line, at one point a tangent line and at no points an exterior line. A chord is the line segment that joins two distinct points of a circle. A chord is therefore contained in a unique secant line and each secant line ...
A circular segment (in green) is enclosed between a secant/chord (the dashed line) and the arc whose endpoints equal the chord's (the arc shown above the green area). In geometry, a circular segment or disk segment (symbol: ⌓) is a region of a disk [1] which is "cut off" from the rest of the disk by a straight line.
Plot of the six trigonometric functions, the unit circle, and a line for the angle θ = 0.7 radians. The points labeled 1, Sec(θ), Csc(θ) represent the length of the line segment from the origin to that point.
Next to the intersecting chords theorem and the tangent-secant theorem, the intersecting secants theorem represents one of the three basic cases of a more general theorem about two intersecting lines and a circle - the power of point theorem.
Secant-, chord-theorem. For the intersecting secants theorem and chord theorem the power of a point plays the role of an invariant: . Intersecting secants theorem: For a point outside a circle and the intersection points , of a secant line with the following statement is true: | | | | = (), hence the product is independent of line .
Equal chords are subtended by equal angles from the center of the circle. A chord that passes through the center of a circle is called a diameter and is the longest chord of that specific circle. If the line extensions (secant lines) of chords AB and CD intersect at a point P, then their lengths satisfy AP·PB = CP·PD (power of a point theorem).
For comparison, secant lines intersect a circle at two points, whereas another line may not intersect a circle at all. This property of tangent lines is preserved under many geometrical transformations , such as scalings , rotation , translations , inversions , and map projections .
The word secant comes from Latin for "to cut", and a general secant line "cuts" a circle, intersecting it twice; this concept dates to antiquity and can be found in Book 3 of Euclid's Elements, as used e.g. in the intersecting secants theorem. 18th century sources in Latin called any non-tangential line segment external to a circle with one endpoint on the circumference a secans exterior.