Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
The method hinges on the observation that the radius of a circle is always normal to the circle itself. With this in mind Descartes would construct a circle that was tangent to a given curve. He could then use the radius at the point of intersection to find the slope of a normal line, and from this one can easily find the slope of a tangent line.
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.
The Hallade method, devised by Frenchman Emile Hallade, is a method used in track geometry for surveying, designing and setting out curves in railway track. [1] It involves measuring the offset of a string line from the outside of a curve at the central point of a chord. In reality, string is too thick to provide a clear reading and breaks ...
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.
Consider the problem of calculating the shape of an unknown curve which starts at a given point and satisfies a given differential equation. Here, a differential equation can be thought of as a formula by which the slope of the tangent line to the curve can be computed at any point on the curve, once the position of that point has been calculated.
When rectified, the curve gives a straight line segment with the same length as the curve's arc length. Arc length s of a logarithmic spiral as a function of its parameter θ . Arc length is the distance between two points along a section of a curve .
Heun's Method considers the tangent lines to the solution curve at both ends of the interval, one which overestimates, and one which underestimates the ideal vertical coordinates. A prediction line must be constructed based on the right end point tangent's slope alone, approximated using Euler's Method.