In mathematics, a projective plane is a geometric structure that extends the concept of a plane. In the ordinary Euclidean plane, two lines typically intersect at a single point, but there are some pairs of lines that do not intersect. A projective plane can be thought of as an ordinary plane equipped with additional "points at infinity" where parallel lines intersect. Thus any two distinct lines in a projective plane intersect at exactly one point.
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.
In mathematics, projective geometry is the study of geometric properties that are invariant with respect to projective transformations. This means that, compared to elementary Euclidean geometry, projective geometry has a different setting, projective space, and a selective set of basic geometric concepts. The basic intuitions are that projective space has more points than Euclidean space, for a given dimension, and that geometric transformations are permitted that transform the extra points to Euclidean points, and vice versa.
In mathematics, affine geometry is what remains of Euclidean geometry when ignoring the metric notions of distance and angle.
In projective geometry, Desargues's theorem, named after Girard Desargues, states:
In geometry, the Dandelin spheres are one or two spheres that are tangent both to a plane and to a cone that intersects the plane. The intersection of the cone and the plane is a conic section, and the point at which either sphere touches the plane is a focus of the conic section, so the Dandelin spheres are also sometimes called focal spheres.
In projective geometry, Pascal's theorem states that if six arbitrary points are chosen on a conic and joined by line segments in any order to form a hexagon, then the three pairs of opposite sides of the hexagon meet at three points which lie on a straight line, called the Pascal line of the hexagon. It is named after Blaise Pascal.
In mathematics, Pappus's hexagon theorem states that
In geometry, a bitangent to a curve C is a line L that touches C in two distinct points P and Q and that has the same direction as C at these points. That is, L is a tangent line at P and at Q.
In Euclidean plane geometry, Apollonius's problem is to construct circles that are tangent to three given circles in a plane (Figure 1). Apollonius of Perga posed and solved this famous problem in his work Ἐπαφαί ; this work has been lost, but a 4th-century AD report of his results by Pappus of Alexandria has survived. Three given circles generically have eight different circles that are tangent to them (Figure 2), a pair of solutions for each way to divide the three given circles in two subsets.
In geometry, a pencil is a family of geometric objects with a common property, for example the set of lines that pass through a given point in a plane, or the set of circles that pass through two given points in a plane.
In geometry, collinearity of a set of points is the property of their lying on a single line. A set of points with this property is said to be collinear. In greater generality, the term has been used for aligned objects, that is, things being "in a line" or "in a row".
Geometry is a branch of mathematics concerned with questions of shape, size, relative position of figures, and the properties of space. Geometry is one of the oldest mathematical sciences.
In geometry, a homothetic center is a point from which at least two geometrically similar figures can be seen as a dilation or contraction of one another. If the center is external, the two figures are directly similar to one another; their angles have the same rotational sense. If the center is internal, the two figures are scaled mirror images of one another; their angles have the opposite sense.
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 mathematics, a plane is a two-dimensional space or flat surface that extends indefinitely. A plane is the two-dimensional analogue of a point, a line and three-dimensional space. When working exclusively in two-dimensional Euclidean space, the definite article is used, so the Euclidean plane refers to the whole space.
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 perpendicular to the radius to that point, theorems involving tangent lines often involve radial lines and orthogonal circles.
In Euclidean and projective geometry, five points determine a conic, just as two (distinct) points determine a line. There are additional subtleties for conics that do not exist for lines, and thus the statement and its proof for conics are both more technical than for lines.
The terminology of algebraic geometry changed drastically during the twentieth century, with the introduction of the general methods, initiated by David Hilbert and the Italian school of algebraic geometry in the beginning of the century, and later formalized by André Weil, Jean-Pierre Serre and Alexander Grothendieck. Much of the classical terminology, mainly based on case study, was simply abandoned, with the result that books and papers written before this time can be hard to read. This article lists some of this classical terminology, and describes some of the changes in conventions.
In Euclidean geometry, the bundle theorem is a statement about six circles and eight points in the Euclidean plane. In general incidence geometry, it is a similar property that a Möbius plane may or may not satisfy. According to Kahn's Theorem, it is fulfilled by "ovoidal" Möbius planes only; thus, it is the analog for Möbius planes of Desargues' Theorem for projective planes.
