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In geometry, an envelope of a planar family of curves is a curve that is tangent to each member of the family at some point, and these points of tangency together form the whole envelope. Classically, a point on the envelope can be thought of as the intersection of two " infinitesimally adjacent" curves, meaning the limit of intersections of ...
The second potential problem is that even if the intersection is zero-dimensional, it may be non-transverse, for example, if V is a plane curve and W is one of its tangent lines. The first problem requires the machinery of intersection theory, discussed above in detail, which replaces V and W by more convenient subvarieties using the moving lemma.
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 point and has the same curvature as the curve at that point. [2] The osculating circle provides a way to understand the local behavior of a curve and is commonly used in differential geometry and calculus.
As an example, count the conic sections tangent to five given lines in the projective plane. [4] The conics constitute a projective space of dimension 5, taking their six coefficients as homogeneous coordinates , and five points determine a conic , if the points are in general linear position , as passing through a given point imposes a linear ...
The tangent line is said to be "going in the same direction" as the curve, and is thus the best straight-line approximation to the curve at that point. The tangent line to a point on a differentiable curve can also be thought of as a tangent line approximation, the graph of the affine function that best approximates the original function at the ...
An osculating curve from a given family of curves is a curve that has the highest possible order of contact with a given curve at a given point; for instance a tangent line is an osculating curve from the family of lines, and has first-order contact with the given curve; an osculating circle is an osculating curve from the family of circles ...