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A straight line can intersect a circle at zero, one, or two points. A line with intersections at two points is called a secant line, at one point a tangent line and at no points an exterior line. A chord is the line segment that joins two distinct points of a circle. A chord is therefore contained in a unique secant line and each secant line ...
Next to the intersecting chords theorem and the tangent-secant theorem, the intersecting secants theorem represents one of the three basic cases of a more general theorem about two intersecting lines and a circle - the power of point theorem.
The word secant comes from Latin for "to cut", and a general secant line "cuts" a circle, intersecting it twice; this concept dates to antiquity and can be found in Book 3 of Euclid's Elements, as used e.g. in the intersecting secants theorem. 18th century sources in Latin called any non-tangential line segment external to a circle with one endpoint on the circumference a secans exterior.
Common lines and line segments on a circle, including a chord in blue. A chord (from the Latin chorda, meaning "bowstring") of a circle is a straight line segment whose endpoints both lie on a circular arc. If a chord were to be extended infinitely on both directions into a line, the object is a secant line.
Secant is a term in mathematics derived from the Latin secare ("to cut"). It may refer to: a secant line, in geometry; the secant variety, in algebraic geometry; secant (trigonometry) (Latin: secans), the multiplicative inverse (or reciprocal) trigonometric function of the cosine
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A ruled surface with an embedding into projective space so that the lines of the ruled surface are also lines of projective space. secant 1. A line intersecting a variety in 2 points, or more generally an n-dimensional projective space meeting a variety in n+1 points. 2. A secant variety is the union of the secants of a variety. second kind