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History. The curve was first proposed and studied by René Descartes in 1638. Its claim to fame lies in an incident in the development of calculus.Descartes challenged Pierre de Fermat to find the tangent line to the curve at an arbitrary point since Fermat had recently discovered a method for finding tangent lines.
Method of normals. In calculus, the method of normals was a technique invented by Descartes for finding normal and tangent lines to curves. It represented one of the earliest methods for constructing tangents to curves. The method hinges on the observation that the radius of a circle is always normal to the circle itself.
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.
The construction of the tangents to the curve then easily follows and Descartes applied this algebraic procedure for finding tangents to several curves. The third book, On the Construction of Solid and Supersolid Problems , is more properly algebraic than geometric and concerns the nature of equations and how they may be solved.
Tangent line to a space curve. In mathematics, a tangent vector is a vector that is tangent to a curve or surface at a given point. Tangent vectors are described in the differential geometry of curves in the context of curves in R n. More generally, tangent vectors are elements of a tangent space of a differentiable manifold.
Snell's law (also known as the Snell–Descartes law, the ibn-Sahl law, [1] and the law of refraction) is a formula used to describe the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction, when referring to light or other waves passing through a boundary between two different isotropic media, such as water, glass, or air.
Osculating circles of the Archimedean spiral, nested by the Tait–Kneser theorem. "The spiral itself is not drawn: we see it as the locus of points where the circles are especially close to each other." [1] An osculating circle is a circle that best approximates the curvature of a curve at a specific point. It is tangent to the curve at that ...
In mathematics, a trident curve (also trident of Newton or parabola of Descartes) is any member of the family of curves that have the formula : Trident curves are cubic plane curves with an ordinary double point in the real projective plane at x = 0, y = 1, z = 0; if we substitute x = xz and y = 1 z into the equation of the trident curve, we get.