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Snell's law. Refraction of light at the interface between two media of different refractive indices, with n 2 > n 1. Since the velocity is lower in the second medium (v 2 < v 1), the angle of refraction θ 2 is less than the angle of incidence θ 1; that is, the ray in the higher-index medium is closer to the normal.
This is the convention followed in this article. In mathematics, a spherical coordinate system is a coordinate system for three-dimensional space where the position of a given point in space is specified by three real numbers: the radial distance r along the radial line connecting the point to the fixed point of origin; the polar angle θ ...
Spherical trigonometry. The octant of a sphere is a spherical triangle with three right angles. Spherical trigonometry is the branch of spherical geometry that deals with the metrical relationships between the sides and angles of spherical triangles, traditionally expressed using trigonometric functions. On the sphere, geodesics are great circles.
In geometry, the tangential angle of a curve in the Cartesian plane, at a specific point, is the angle between the tangent line to the curve at the given point and the x -axis. [1] (. Some authors define the angle as the deviation from the direction of the curve at some fixed starting point. This is equivalent to the definition given here by ...
Illustration of tangential and normal components of a vector to a surface. In mathematics, given a vector at a point on a curve, that vector can be decomposed uniquely as a sum of two vectors, one tangent to the curve, called the tangential component of the vector, and another one perpendicular to the curve, called the normal component of the vector.
In Euclidean plane geometry, a tangent line to a circle is a line that touches the circle at exactly one point, never entering the circle's interior. Tangent lines to circles form the subject of several theorems, and play an important role in many geometrical constructions and proofs. Since the tangent line to a circle at a point P is ...
The circle S and the curve C have the common tangent line at P, and therefore the common normal line. Close to P, the distance between the points of the curve C and the circle S in the normal direction decays as the cube or a higher power of the distance to P in the tangential direction.
Rankine's method. Rankine's method or tangential angle method is an angular technique for laying out circular curves by a combination of chaining and angles at circumference, fully exploiting the theodolite and making a substantial improvement in accuracy and productivity over existing methods. This method requires access to only one road/path ...