Cone | |
---|---|
Type | Solid figure |
Faces | 1 circular face and 1 conic surface |
Euler char. | 2 |
Symmetry group | O(2) |
Surface area | π r2 + π rℓ |
Volume | (π r2h)/3 |
A cone is a three-dimensional geometric shape that tapers smoothly from a flat base (frequently, though not necessarily, circular) to a point called the apex or vertex.
A cone is formed by a set of line segments, half-lines, or lines connecting a common point, the apex, to all of the points on a base that is in a plane that does not contain the apex. Depending on the author, the base may be restricted to be a circle, any one-dimensional quadratic form in the plane, any closed one-dimensional figure, or any of the above plus all the enclosed points. If the enclosed points are included in the base, the cone is a solid object; otherwise it is a two-dimensional object in three-dimensional space. In the case of a solid object, the boundary formed by these lines or partial lines is called the lateral surface; if the lateral surface is unbounded, it is a conical surface.
In the case of line segments, the cone does not extend beyond the base, while in the case of half-lines, it extends infinitely far. In the case of lines, the cone extends infinitely far in both directions from the apex, in which case it is sometimes called a double cone. Either half of a double cone on one side of the apex is called a nappe.
The axis of a cone is the straight line (if any), passing through the apex, about which the base (and the whole cone) has a circular symmetry.
In common usage in elementary geometry, cones are assumed to be right circular, where circular means that the base is a circle and right means that the axis passes through the centre of the base at right angles to its plane. [1] If the cone is right circular the intersection of a plane with the lateral surface is a conic section. In general, however, the base may be any shape [2] and the apex may lie anywhere (though it is usually assumed that the base is bounded and therefore has finite area, and that the apex lies outside the plane of the base). Contrasted with right cones are oblique cones, in which the axis passes through the centre of the base non-perpendicularly. [3]
A cone with a polygonal base is called a pyramid.
Depending on the context, "cone" may also mean specifically a convex cone or a projective cone.
Cones can also be generalized to higher dimensions.
The perimeter of the base of a cone is called the "directrix", and each of the line segments between the directrix and apex is a "generatrix" or "generating line" of the lateral surface. (For the connection between this sense of the term "directrix" and the directrix of a conic section, see Dandelin spheres.)
The "base radius" of a circular cone is the radius of its base; often this is simply called the radius of the cone. The aperture of a right circular cone is the maximum angle between two generatrix lines; if the generatrix makes an angle θ to the axis, the aperture is 2θ. In optics, the angle θ is called the half-angle of the cone, to distinguish it from the aperture.
A cone with a region including its apex cut off by a plane is called a truncated cone; if the truncation plane is parallel to the cone's base, it is called a frustum . [1] An elliptical cone is a cone with an elliptical base. [1] A generalized cone is the surface created by the set of lines passing through a vertex and every point on a boundary (also see visual hull).
The volume of any conic solid is one third of the product of the area of the base and the height [4]
In modern mathematics, this formula can easily be computed using calculus — it is, up to scaling, the integral
Without using calculus, the formula can be proven by comparing the cone to a pyramid and applying Cavalieri's principle – specifically, comparing the cone to a (vertically scaled) right square pyramid, which forms one third of a cube. This formula cannot be proven without using such infinitesimal arguments – unlike the 2-dimensional formulae for polyhedral area, though similar to the area of the circle – and hence admitted less rigorous proofs before the advent of calculus, with the ancient Greeks using the method of exhaustion. This is essentially the content of Hilbert's third problem – more precisely, not all polyhedral pyramids are scissors congruent (can be cut apart into finite pieces and rearranged into the other), and thus volume cannot be computed purely by using a decomposition argument. [5]
The center of mass of a conic solid of uniform density lies one-quarter of the way from the center of the base to the vertex, on the straight line joining the two.
For a circular cone with radius r and height h, the base is a circle of area and so the formula for volume becomes [6]
The slant height of a right circular cone is the distance from any point on the circle of its base to the apex via a line segment along the surface of the cone. It is given by , where is the radius of the base and is the height. This can be proved by the Pythagorean theorem.
The lateral surface area of a right circular cone is where is the radius of the circle at the bottom of the cone and is the slant height of the cone. [4] The surface area of the bottom circle of a cone is the same as for any circle, . Thus, the total surface area of a right circular cone can be expressed as each of the following:
The circular sector is obtained by unfolding the surface of one nappe of the cone:
The surface of a cone can be parameterized as
where is the angle "around" the cone, and is the "height" along the cone.
A right solid circular cone with height and aperture , whose axis is the coordinate axis and whose apex is the origin, is described parametrically as
where range over , , and , respectively.
In implicit form, the same solid is defined by the inequalities
where
More generally, a right circular cone with vertex at the origin, axis parallel to the vector , and aperture , is given by the implicit vector equation where
where , and denotes the dot product.
In the Cartesian coordinate system, an elliptic cone is the locus of an equation of the form [7]
It is an affine image of the right-circular unit cone with equation From the fact, that the affine image of a conic section is a conic section of the same type (ellipse, parabola,...), one gets:
Obviously, any right circular cone contains circles. This is also true, but less obvious, in the general case (see circular section).
The intersection of an elliptic cone with a concentric sphere is a spherical conic.
In projective geometry, a cylinder is simply a cone whose apex is at infinity. [8] Intuitively, if one keeps the base fixed and takes the limit as the apex goes to infinity, one obtains a cylinder, the angle of the side increasing as arctan, in the limit forming a right angle. This is useful in the definition of degenerate conics, which require considering the cylindrical conics.
According to G. B. Halsted, a cone is generated similarly to a Steiner conic only with a projectivity and axial pencils (not in perspective) rather than the projective ranges used for the Steiner conic:
"If two copunctual non-costraight axial pencils are projective but not perspective, the meets of correlated planes form a 'conic surface of the second order', or 'cone'." [9]
The definition of a cone may be extended to higher dimensions; see convex cone. In this case, one says that a convex set C in the real vector space is a cone (with apex at the origin) if for every vector x in C and every nonnegative real number a, the vector ax is in C. [2] In this context, the analogues of circular cones are not usually special; in fact one is often interested in polyhedral cones.
An even more general concept is the topological cone, which is defined in arbitrary topological spaces.
Area is the measure of a region's size on a surface. The area of a plane region or plane area refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while surface area refers to the area of an open surface or the boundary of a three-dimensional object. Area can be understood as the amount of material with a given thickness that would be necessary to fashion a model of the shape, or the amount of paint necessary to cover the surface with a single coat. It is the two-dimensional analogue of the length of a curve or the volume of a solid . Two different regions may have the same area ; by synecdoche, "area" sometimes is used to refer to the region, as in a "polygonal area".
In mathematics, an ellipse is a plane curve surrounding two focal points, such that for all points on the curve, the sum of the two distances to the focal points is a constant. It generalizes a circle, which is the special type of ellipse in which the two focal points are the same. The elongation of an ellipse is measured by its eccentricity , a number ranging from to .
In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north–south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from −90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pole, with 0° at the Equator. Lines of constant latitude, or parallels, run east–west as circles parallel to the equator. Latitude and longitude are used together as a coordinate pair to specify a location on the surface of the Earth.
In mathematics, a parabola is a plane curve which is mirror-symmetrical and is approximately U-shaped. It fits several superficially different mathematical descriptions, which can all be proved to define exactly the same curves.
In mathematics, the polar coordinate system is a two-dimensional coordinate system in which each point on a plane is determined by a distance from a reference point and an angle from a reference direction. The reference point is called the pole, and the ray from the pole in the reference direction is the polar axis. The distance from the pole is called the radial coordinate, radial distance or simply radius, and the angle is called the angular coordinate, polar angle, or azimuth. Angles in polar notation are generally expressed in either degrees or radians.
A sphere is a geometrical object that is a three-dimensional analogue to a two-dimensional circle. Formally, a sphere is the set of points that are all at the same distance r from a given point in three-dimensional space. That given point is the center of the sphere, and r is the sphere's radius. The earliest known mentions of spheres appear in the work of the ancient Greek mathematicians.
The steradian or square radian is the unit of solid angle in the International System of Units (SI). It is used in three dimensional geometry, and is analogous to the radian, which quantifies planar angles. Whereas an angle in radians, projected onto a circle, gives a length of a circular arc on the circumference, a solid angle in steradians, projected onto a sphere, gives the area of a spherical cap on the surface. The name is derived from the Greek στερεός stereos 'solid' + radian.
In geometry, a solid angle is a measure of the amount of the field of view from some particular point that a given object covers. That is, it is a measure of how large the object appears to an observer looking from that point. The point from which the object is viewed is called the apex of the solid angle, and the object is said to subtend its solid angle at that point.
A surface of revolution is a surface in Euclidean space created by rotating a curve one full revolution around an axis of rotation . The volume bounded by the surface created by this revolution is the solid of revolution.
In geometry, a circular segment or disk segment is a region of a disk which is "cut off" from the rest of the disk by a straight line. The complete line is known as a secant, and the section inside the disk as a chord.
In mathematics, Pappus's centroid theorem is either of two related theorems dealing with the surface areas and volumes of surfaces and solids of revolution.
In geometry, an epicycloid is a plane curve produced by tracing the path of a chosen point on the circumference of a circle—called an epicycle—which rolls without slipping around a fixed circle. It is a particular kind of roulette.
A cylinder has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base.
In geometry, a spherical cap or spherical dome is a portion of a sphere or of a ball cut off by a plane. It is also a spherical segment of one base, i.e., bounded by a single plane. If the plane passes through the center of the sphere, so that the height of the cap is equal to the radius of the sphere, the spherical cap is called a hemisphere.
In mathematics (specifically multivariable calculus), a multiple integral is a definite integral of a function of several real variables, for instance, f(x, y) or f(x, y, z). Physical (natural philosophy) interpretation: S any surface, V any volume, etc.. Incl. variable to time, position, etc.
In geometry, a hypercone is the figure in the 4-dimensional Euclidean space represented by the equation
A conic section, conic or a quadratic curve is a curve obtained from a cone's surface intersecting a plane. The three types of conic section are the hyperbola, the parabola, and the ellipse; the circle is a special case of the ellipse, though it was sometimes called as a fourth type. The ancient Greek mathematicians studied conic sections, culminating around 200 BC with Apollonius of Perga's systematic work on their properties.
In solid geometry, an ungula is a region of a solid of revolution, cut off by a plane oblique to its base. A common instance is the spherical wedge. The term ungula refers to the hoof of a horse, an anatomical feature that defines a class of mammals called ungulates.
In geometry, a spherical sector, also known as a spherical cone, is a portion of a sphere or of a ball defined by a conical boundary with apex at the center of the sphere. It can be described as the union of a spherical cap and the cone formed by the center of the sphere and the base of the cap. It is the three-dimensional analogue of the sector of a circle.
In differential geometry Dupin's theorem, named after the French mathematician Charles Dupin, is the statement: