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Illustration of tangential and normal components of a vector to a surface. In mathematics, given a vector at a point on a curve, that vector can be decomposed uniquely as a sum of two vectors, one tangent to the curve, called the tangential component of the vector, and another one perpendicular to the curve, called the normal component of the vector.
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. With this in mind Descartes would ...
T is the unit tangent, P the unit normal, and B the unit binormal. A Frenet frame is a moving reference frame of n orthonormal vectors e i ( t ) which are used to describe a curve locally at each point γ ( t ) .
A line is normal to γ at γ(t) if it passes through γ(t) and is perpendicular to the tangent vector to γ at γ(t). Let T denote the unit tangent vector to γ and let N denote the unit normal vector. Using a dot to denote the dot product, the generating family for the one-parameter family of normal lines is given by F : I × R 2 → R where
Similarly, the tangent plane to a surface at a given point is the plane that "just touches" the surface at that point. The concept of a tangent is one of the most fundamental notions in differential geometry and has been extensively generalized; see Tangent space. The word "tangent" comes from the Latin tangere, "to touch".
In geometry, a normal is an object (e.g. a line, ray, or vector) that is perpendicular to a given object. For example, the normal line to a plane curve at a given point is the line perpendicular to the tangent line to the curve at the point. A normal vector of length one is called a unit normal vector.
The distances shown are the ordinate (AP), tangent (TP), subtangent (TA), normal (PN), and subnormal (AN). The angle φ is the angle of inclination of the tangent line or the tangential angle. In geometry, the subtangent and related terms are certain line segments defined using the line tangent to a curve at a given point and the coordinate ...
The evolute of a curve, a surface, or more generally a submanifold, is the caustic of the normal map. Let M be a smooth, regular submanifold in R n. For each point p in M and each vector v, based at p and normal to M, we associate the point p + v. This defines a Lagrangian map, called the normal map. The caustic of the normal map is the evolute ...