In geometry, the seven circles theorem is a theorem about a certain arrangement of seven circles in the Euclidean plane. Specifically, given a chain of six circles all tangent to a seventh circle and each tangent to its two neighbors, the three lines drawn between opposite pairs of the points of tangency on the seventh circle all pass through the same point. Though elementary in nature, this theorem was not discovered until 1974 (by Evelyn, Money-Coutts, and Tyrrell).
A circle is a shape consisting of all points in a plane that are at a given distance from a given point, the centre. The distance between any point of the circle and the centre is called the radius. The length of a line segment connecting two points on the circle and passing through the centre is called the diameter. A circle bounds a region of the plane called a disc.
Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multilinear algebra. The field has its origins in the study of spherical geometry as far back as antiquity. It also relates to astronomy, the geodesy of the Earth, and later the study of hyperbolic geometry by Lobachevsky. The simplest examples of smooth spaces are the plane and space curves and surfaces in the three-dimensional Euclidean space, and the study of these shapes formed the basis for development of modern differential geometry during the 18th and 19th centuries.
A triangle is a polygon with three corners and three sides, one of the basic shapes in geometry. The corners, also called vertices, are zero-dimensional points while the sides connecting them, also called edges, are one-dimensional line segments. A triangle has three internal angles, each one bounded by a pair of adjacent edges; the sum of angles of a triangle always equals a straight angle. The triangle is a plane figure and its interior is a planar region. Sometimes an arbitrary edge is chosen to be the base, in which case the opposite vertex is called the apex; the shortest segment between the base and apex is the height. The area of a triangle equals one-half the product of height and base length.
In geometry, two geometric objects are perpendicular if their intersection forms right angles at the point of intersection called a foot. The condition of perpendicularity may be represented graphically using the perpendicular symbol, ⟂. Perpendicular intersections can happen between two lines, between a line and a plane, and between two planes.
In geometry, a geodesic is a curve representing in some sense the shortest path (arc) between two points in a surface, or more generally in a Riemannian manifold. The term also has meaning in any differentiable manifold with a connection. It is a generalization of the notion of a "straight line".
In geometry, a secant is a line that intersects a curve at a minimum of two distinct points. The word secant comes from the Latin word secare, meaning to cut. In the case of a circle, a secant intersects the circle at exactly two points. A chord is the line segment determined by the two points, that is, the interval on the secant whose ends are the two points.
In geometry, the power center of three circles, also called the radical center, is the intersection point of the three radical axes of the pairs of circles. If the radical center lies outside of all three circles, then it is the center of the unique circle that intersects the three given circles orthogonally; the construction of this orthogonal circle corresponds to Monge's problem. This is a special case of the three conics theorem.
In mathematics, two functions have a contact of order k if, at a point P, they have the same value and their first k derivatives are equal. This is an equivalence relation, whose equivalence classes are generally called jets. The point of osculation is also called the double cusp. Contact is a geometric notion; it can be defined algebraically as a valuation.
In geometry, Descartes' theorem states that for every four kissing, or mutually tangent, circles, the radii of the circles satisfy a certain quadratic equation. By solving this equation, one can construct a fourth circle tangent to three given, mutually tangent circles. The theorem is named after René Descartes, who stated it in 1643.
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 geometry, an arbelos is a plane region bounded by three semicircles with three apexes such that each corner of each semicircle is shared with one of the others (connected), all on the same side of a straight line that contains their diameters.
In geometry, Brianchon's theorem is a theorem stating that when a hexagon is circumscribed around a conic section, its principal diagonals meet in a single point. It is named after Charles Julien Brianchon (1783–1864).
In geometry, lines in a plane or higher-dimensional space are concurrent if they intersect at a single point.
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 mathematics, enumerative geometry is the branch of algebraic geometry concerned with counting numbers of solutions to geometric questions, mainly by means of intersection theory.
Visual calculus, invented by Mamikon Mnatsakanian, is an approach to solving a variety of integral calculus problems. Many problems that would otherwise seem quite difficult yield to the method with hardly a line of calculation. Mamikon collaborated with Tom Apostol on the 2013 book New Horizons in Geometry describing the subject.
In geometry, Monge's theorem, named after Gaspard Monge, states that for any three circles in a plane, none of which is completely inside one of the others, the intersection points of each of the three pairs of external tangent lines are collinear.
In geometry, the five circles theorem states that, given five circles centered on a common sixth circle and intersecting each other chainwise on the same circle, the lines joining their second intersection points forms a pentagram whose points lie on the circles themselves.
In geometry, the six circles theorem relates to a chain of six circles together with a triangle, such that each circle is tangent to two sides of the triangle and also to the preceding circle in the chain. The chain closes, in the sense that the sixth circle is always tangent to the first circle. It is assumed in this construction that all circles lie within the triangle, and all points of tangency lie on the sides of the triangle. If the problem is generalized to allow circles that may not be within the triangle, and points of tangency on the lines extending the sides of the triangle, then the sequence of circles eventually reaches a periodic sequence of six circles, but may take arbitrarily many steps to reach this periodicity.
In Euclidean geometry, the tangent-secant theorem describes the relation of line segments created by a secant and a tangent line with the associated circle. This result is found as Proposition 36 in Book 3 of Euclid's Elements.