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  2. Tangent - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangent

    The tangent line to a point on a differentiable curve can also be thought of as a tangent line approximation, the graph of the affine function that best approximates the original function at the given point. [3] Similarly, the tangent plane to a surface at a given point is the plane that "just touches" the

  3. Tangent lines to circles - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangent_lines_to_circles

    A tangent line t to a circle C intersects the circle at a single point T. 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 ...

  4. Method of normals - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_normals

    In calculus, the method of normals was a technique invented by Descartes for finding normal and tangent lines to curves. It represented one of the earliest methods for constructing tangents to curves. 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 ...

  5. Differential calculus - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_calculus

    One example of an optimization problem is: Find the shortest curve between two points on a surface, assuming that the curve must also lie on the surface. If the surface is a plane, then the shortest curve is a line. But if the surface is, for example, egg-shaped, then the shortest path is not immediately clear.

  6. Tangent circles - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangent_circles

    In geometry, tangent circles (also known as kissing circles) are circles in a common plane that intersect in a single point. There are two types of tangency : internal and external. Many problems and constructions in geometry are related to tangent circles; such problems often have real-life applications such as trilateration and maximizing the ...

  7. Envelope (mathematics) - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envelope_(mathematics)

    Geometrically, the graph of v(x) is everywhere tangent to the graph of some member of the family u(x;a). Since the differential equation is first order, it only puts a condition on the tangent plane to the graph, so that any function everywhere tangent to a solution must also be a solution.

  8. Tangent vector - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangent_vector

    In mathematics, a tangent vector is a vector that is tangent to a curve or surface at a given point. Tangent vectors are described in the differential geometry of curves in the context of curves in R n. More generally, tangent vectors are elements of a tangent space of a differentiable manifold. Tangent vectors can also be described in terms of ...

  9. Circle packing theorem - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_packing_theorem

    A stronger form of the circle packing theorem asserts that any polyhedral graph and its dual graph can be represented by two circle packings, such that the two tangent circles representing a primal graph edge and the two tangent circles representing the dual of the same edge always have their tangencies at right angles to each other at the same ...