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The tangent plane to a surface at a given point p is defined in an analogous way to the tangent line in the case of curves. It is the best approximation of the surface by a plane at p , and can be obtained as the limiting position of the planes passing through 3 distinct points on the surface close to p as these points converge to p .
The tangent plane is an affine concept, because its definition is independent of the choice of a metric. In other words, any affine transformation maps the tangent plane to the surface at a point to the tangent plane to the image of the surface at the image of the point.
The tangent plane at a regular point is the affine plane in R 3 spanned by these vectors and passing through the point r(u, v) on the surface determined by the parameters. Any tangent vector can be uniquely decomposed into a linear combination of r u {\displaystyle \mathbf {r} _{u}} and r v . {\displaystyle \mathbf {r} _{v}.}
In three-dimensional space, a surface normal, or simply normal, to a surface at point P is a vector perpendicular to the tangent plane of the surface at P. The word normal is also used as an adjective: a line normal to a plane, the normal component of a force, the normal vector, etc. The concept of normality generalizes to orthogonality (right ...
In classical differential geometry, development is the rolling one smooth surface over another in Euclidean space. For example, the tangent plane to a surface (such as the sphere or the cylinder) at a point can be rolled around the surface to obtain the tangent plane at other points.
The second fundamental form of a parametric surface S in R 3 was introduced and studied by Gauss.First suppose that the surface is the graph of a twice continuously differentiable function, z = f(x,y), and that the plane z = 0 is tangent to the surface at the origin.
The tangent developable of a helix. In the mathematical study of the differential geometry of surfaces, a tangent developable is a particular kind of developable surface obtained from a curve in Euclidean space as the surface swept out by the tangent lines to the curve. Such a surface is also the envelope of the tangent planes to the curve.
Also, horizontal planes can intersect when they are tangent planes to separated points on the surface of the Earth. In particular, a plane tangent to a point on the equator intersects the plane tangent to the North Pole at a right angle. (See diagram). Furthermore, the equatorial plane is parallel to the tangent plane at the North Pole and as ...