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The circle is the basis for the wheel, which, with related inventions such as gears, makes much of modern machinery possible. In mathematics, the study of the circle has helped inspire the development of geometry, astronomy and calculus.
A mathematical symbol is a figure or a combination of figures that is used to represent a mathematical object, an action on mathematical objects, a relation between mathematical objects, or for structuring the other symbols that occur in a formula.
Since C = 2πr, the circumference of a unit circle is 2π. In mathematics, a unit circle is a circle of unit radius—that is, a radius of 1. [1] Frequently, especially in trigonometry, the unit circle is the circle of radius 1 centered at the origin (0, 0) in the Cartesian coordinate system in the Euclidean plane.
The circumference of a circle is the distance around it, but if, as in many elementary treatments, distance is defined in terms of straight lines, this cannot be used as a definition. Under these circumstances, the circumference of a circle may be defined as the limit of the perimeters of inscribed regular polygons as the number of sides ...
Thus a circle in the Euclidean plane was defined as the locus of a point that is at a given distance of a fixed point, the center of the circle. In modern mathematics, similar concepts are more frequently reformulated by describing shapes as sets; for instance, one says that the circle is the set of points that are at a given distance from the ...
A circle can also be defined as the circle of Apollonius, in terms of two different foci, as the locus of points having a fixed ratio of distances to the two foci. A parabola is a limiting case of an ellipse in which one of the foci is a point at infinity .
The transformation sends the circle to an ellipse by stretching or shrinking the horizontal and vertical diameters to the major and minor axes of the ellipse. The square gets sent to a rectangle circumscribing the ellipse. The ratio of the area of the circle to the square is π /4, which means the ratio of the ellipse to the rectangle is also π /4
All of the trigonometric functions of the angle θ (theta) can be constructed geometrically in terms of a unit circle centered at O. Sine function on unit circle (top) and its graph (bottom) In this illustration, the six trigonometric functions of an arbitrary angle θ are represented as Cartesian coordinates of points related to the unit circle.