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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 .
A straight line through a circle's center is orthogonal to it, and if straight lines are also considered as a kind of generalized circles, for instance in inversive geometry, then an orthogonal pair of lines or line and circle are orthogonal generalized circles.
In the case of a plane simple closed curve (that is, a curve in the plane whose starting point is also the end point and which has no other self-intersections), the curve is said to be positively oriented or counterclockwise oriented, if one always has the curve interior to the left (and consequently, the curve exterior to the right), when ...
For an internally tangent circle that circumscribes the other circles, the sign is negative. If a straight line is considered a degenerate circle with zero curvature (and thus infinite radius), Descartes' theorem also applies to a line and three circles that are all three mutually tangent (see Generalized circle). [1]
The intersection point falls within the first line segment if 0 ≤ t ≤ 1, and it falls within the second line segment if 0 ≤ u ≤ 1. These inequalities can be tested without the need for division, allowing rapid determination of the existence of any line segment intersection before calculating its exact point. [3]
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Intersection problems between a line and a conic section (circle, ellipse, parabola, etc.) or a quadric (sphere, cylinder, hyperboloid, etc.) lead to quadratic equations that can be easily solved. Intersections between quadrics lead to quartic equations that can be solved algebraically .
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