Length | |
---|---|
Common symbols | l |
SI unit | metre (m) |
Other units | see unit of length |
Extensive? | yes |
Dimension |
Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the International System of Units (SI) system the base unit for length is the metre. [1]
Length is commonly understood to mean the most extended dimension of a fixed object. [1] However, this is not always the case and may depend on the position the object is in.
Various terms for the length of a fixed object are used, and these include height, which is vertical length or vertical extent, width, breadth, and depth. Height is used when there is a base from which vertical measurements can be taken. Width and breadth usually refer to a shorter dimension than length. Depth is used for the measure of a third dimension. [2]
Length is the measure of one spatial dimension, whereas area is a measure of two dimensions (length squared) and volume is a measure of three dimensions (length cubed).
Measurement has been important ever since humans settled from nomadic lifestyles and started using building materials, occupying land and trading with neighbours. As trade between different places increased, the need for standard units of length increased. And later, as society has become more technologically oriented, much higher accuracy of measurement is required in an increasingly diverse set of fields, from micro-electronics to interplanetary ranging. [3]
Under Einstein's special relativity, length can no longer be thought of as being constant in all reference frames. Thus a ruler that is one metre long in one frame of reference will not be one metre long in a reference frame that is moving relative to the first frame. This means the length of an object varies depending on the speed of the observer.
In Euclidean geometry, length is measured along straight lines unless otherwise specified and refers to segments on them. Pythagoras's theorem relating the length of the sides of a right triangle is one of many applications in Euclidean geometry. Length may also be measured along other types of curves and is referred to as arclength.
In a triangle, the length of an altitude, a line segment drawn from a vertex perpendicular to the side not passing through the vertex (referred to as a base of the triangle), is called the height of the triangle.
The area of a rectangle is defined to be length × width of the rectangle. If a long thin rectangle is stood up on its short side then its area could also be described as its height × width.
The volume of a solid rectangular box (such as a plank of wood) is often described as length × height × depth.
The perimeter of a polygon is the sum of the lengths of its sides.
The circumference of a circular disk is the length of the boundary (a circle) of that disk.
In other geometries, length may be measured along possibly curved paths, called geodesics. The Riemannian geometry used in general relativity is an example of such a geometry. In spherical geometry, length is measured along the great circles on the sphere and the distance between two points on the sphere is the shorter of the two lengths on the great circle, which is determined by the plane through the two points and the center of the sphere.
In an unweighted graph, the length of a cycle, path, or walk is the number of edges it uses. [4] In a weighted graph, it may instead be the sum of the weights of the edges that it uses. [5]
Length is used to define the shortest path, girth (shortest cycle length), and longest path between two vertices in a graph.
In measure theory, length is most often generalized to general sets of via the Lebesgue measure. In the one-dimensional case, the Lebesgue outer measure of a set is defined in terms of the lengths of open intervals. Concretely, the length of an open interval is first defined as
so that the Lebesgue outer measure of a general set may then be defined as [6]
In the physical sciences and engineering, when one speaks of units of length , the word length is synonymous with distance. There are several units that are used to measure length. Historically, units of length may have been derived from the lengths of human body parts, the distance travelled in a number of paces, the distance between landmarks or places on the Earth, or arbitrarily on the length of some common object.
In the International System of Units (SI), the base unit of length is the metre (symbol, m), now defined in terms of the speed of light (about 300 million metres per second). The millimetre (mm), centimetre (cm) and the kilometre (km), derived from the metre, are also commonly used units. In U.S. customary units, English or imperial system of units, commonly used units of length are the inch (in), the foot (ft), the yard (yd), and the mile (mi). A unit of length used in navigation is the nautical mile (nmi). [7]
1.609344 km = 1 miles
Units used to denote distances in the vastness of space, as in astronomy, are much longer than those typically used on Earth (metre or kilometre) and include the astronomical unit (au), the light-year, and the parsec (pc).
Units used to denote sub-atomic distances, as in nuclear physics, are much smaller than the millimetre. Examples include the fermi (fm).
In Euclidean geometry, an angle is the figure formed by two rays, called the sides of the angle, sharing a common endpoint, called the vertex of the angle. Angles formed by two rays are also known as plane angles as they lie in the plane that contains the rays. Angles are also formed by the intersection of two planes; these are called dihedral angles. Two intersecting curves may also define an angle, which is the angle of the rays lying tangent to the respective curves at their point of intersection.
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 geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the centre of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid for the diameter of a sphere.
In mathematics, an integral is the continuous analog of a sum, which is used to calculate areas, volumes, and their generalizations. Integration, the process of computing an integral, is one of the two fundamental operations of calculus, the other being differentiation. Integration was initially used to solve problems in mathematics and physics, such as finding the area under a curve, or determining displacement from velocity. Usage of integration expanded to a wide variety of scientific fields thereafter.
In measure theory, a branch of mathematics, the Lebesgue measure, named after French mathematician Henri Lebesgue, is the standard way of assigning a measure to subsets of higher dimensional Euclidean n-spaces. For lower dimensions n = 1, 2, or 3, it coincides with the standard measure of length, area, or volume. In general, it is also called n-dimensional volume, n-volume, hypervolume, or simply volume. It is used throughout real analysis, in particular to define Lebesgue integration. Sets that can be assigned a Lebesgue measure are called Lebesgue-measurable; the measure of the Lebesgue-measurable set A is here denoted by λ(A).
In mathematics, a metric space is a set together with a notion of distance between its elements, usually called points. The distance is measured by a function called a metric or distance function. Metric spaces are the most general setting for studying many of the concepts of mathematical analysis and geometry.
In Euclidean geometry, two objects are similar if they have the same shape, or if one has the same shape as the mirror image of the other. More precisely, one can be obtained from the other by uniformly scaling, possibly with additional translation, rotation and reflection. This means that either object can be rescaled, repositioned, and reflected, so as to coincide precisely with the other object. If two objects are similar, each is congruent to the result of a particular uniform scaling of the other.
Distance is a numerical or occasionally qualitative measurement of how far apart objects, points, people, or ideas are. In physics or everyday usage, distance may refer to a physical length or an estimation based on other criteria. The term is also frequently used metaphorically to mean a measurement of the amount of difference between two similar objects or a degree of separation. Most such notions of distance, both physical and metaphorical, are formalized in mathematics using the notion of a metric space.
Height is measure of vertical distance, either vertical extent or vertical position. For an example of vertical extent, "This basketball player is 7 foot 1 inches in height." For an example of vertical position, "The height of an airplane in-flight is about 10,000 meters."
Elementary mathematics, also known as primary or secondary school mathematics, is the study of mathematics topics that are commonly taught at the primary or secondary school levels around the world. It includes a wide range of mathematical concepts and skills, including number sense, algebra, geometry, measurement, and data analysis. These concepts and skills form the foundation for more advanced mathematical study and are essential for success in many fields and everyday life. The study of elementary mathematics is a crucial part of a student's education and lays the foundation for future academic and career success.
In geometry, the area enclosed by a circle of radius r is πr2. Here the Greek letter π represents the constant ratio of the circumference of any circle to its diameter, approximately equal to 3.14159.
Many letters of the Latin alphabet, both capital and small, are used in mathematics, science, and engineering to denote by convention specific or abstracted constants, variables of a certain type, units, multipliers, or physical entities. Certain letters, when combined with special formatting, take on special meaning.
Stadiametric rangefinding, or the stadia method, is a technique of measuring distances with a telescopic instrument. The term stadia comes from a Greek unit of length Stadion which was the typical length of a sports stadium of the time. Stadiametric rangefinding is used for surveying and in the telescopic sights of firearms, artillery pieces, or tank guns, as well as some binoculars and other optics. It is still widely used in long-range military sniping, but in many professional applications it is being replaced with microwave, infrared, or laser rangefinding methods. Although much easier to use, electronic rangefinders can give away the shooter's position to a well-equipped adversary, and the need for accurate range estimation has existed for much longer than electronic rangefinders small and rugged enough to be suitable for military use.
In mathematics, the Peano–Jordan measure is an extension of the notion of size to shapes more complicated than, for example, a triangle, disk, or parallelepiped.
In mathematics, a Euclidean plane is a Euclidean space of dimension two, denoted or . It is a geometric space in which two real numbers are required to determine the position of each point. It is an affine space, which includes in particular the concept of parallel lines. It has also metrical properties induced by a distance, which allows to define circles, and angle measurement.
In mathematics, the integral of a non-negative function of a single variable can be regarded, in the simplest case, as the area between the graph of that function and the X axis. The Lebesgue integral, named after French mathematician Henri Lebesgue, is one way to make this concept rigorous and to extend it to more general functions.
In mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem or Pythagoras' theorem is a fundamental relation in Euclidean geometry between the three sides of a right triangle. It states that the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares on the other two sides.
Length measurement, distance measurement, or range measurement (ranging) refers to the many ways in which length, distance, or range can be measured. The most commonly used approaches are the rulers, followed by transit-time methods and the interferometer methods based upon the speed of light.
In plane geometry the Blaschke–Lebesgue theorem states that the Reuleaux triangle has the least area of all curves of given constant width. In the form that every curve of a given width has area at least as large as the Reuleaux triangle, it is also known as the Blaschke–Lebesgue inequality. It is named after Wilhelm Blaschke and Henri Lebesgue, who published it separately in the early 20th century.
A geometric separator is a line that partitions a collection of geometric shapes into two subsets, such that proportion of shapes in each subset is bounded, and the number of shapes that do not belong to any subset is small.