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A great circle lies on a plane passing through the center of the sphere, so its extrinsic radius is equal to the radius of the sphere itself, and its extrinsic center is the sphere's center. A small circle lies on a plane not passing through the sphere's center, so its extrinsic radius is smaller than that of the sphere and its extrinsic center ...
A sphere (from Greek σφαῖρα, sphaîra) [1] is a geometrical object that is a three-dimensional analogue to a two-dimensional circle.Formally, a sphere is the set of points that are all at the same distance r from a given point in three-dimensional space. [2]
There is a natural unit of angle measurement (based on a revolution), a natural unit of length (based on the circumference of a great circle) and a natural unit of area (based on the area of the sphere). Each great circle is associated with a pair of antipodal points, called its poles which are the common intersections of the set of great ...
For example, one sphere that is described in Cartesian coordinates with the equation x 2 + y 2 + z 2 = c 2 can be described in spherical coordinates by the simple equation r = c. (In this system—shown here in the mathematics convention—the sphere is adapted as a unit sphere, where the radius is set to unity and then can generally be ignored ...
In mathematics, an n-sphere or hypersphere is an -dimensional generalization of the -dimensional circle and -dimensional sphere to any non-negative integer . The circle is considered 1-dimensional, and the sphere 2-dimensional, because the surfaces themselves are 1- and 2-dimensional respectively, not because they ...
Any other circle of the sphere is called a small circle, and is the intersection of the sphere with a plane not passing through its center. Small circles are the spherical-geometry analog of circles in Euclidean space. Every circle in Euclidean 3-space is a great circle of exactly one sphere. The disk bounded by a great circle is called a great ...
A diagram illustrating great-circle distance (drawn in red) between two points on a sphere, P and Q. Two antipodal points, u and v are also shown. The great-circle distance, orthodromic distance, or spherical distance is the distance between two points on a sphere, measured along the great-circle arc between them. This arc is the shortest path ...
A circle circumference and radius are proportional. The area enclosed and the square of its radius are proportional. The constants of proportionality are 2 π and π respectively. The circle that is centred at the origin with radius 1 is called the unit circle. Thought of as a great circle of the unit sphere, it becomes the Riemannian circle.