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There are two possible reasons for the method of finding the tangents based on the limits and derivatives to fail: either the geometric tangent exists, but it is a vertical line, which cannot be given in the point-slope form since it does not have a slope, or the graph exhibits one of three behaviors that precludes a geometric tangent.
The gradient is dual to the total derivative: the value of the gradient at a point is a tangent vector – a vector at each point; while the value of the derivative at a point is a cotangent vector – a linear functional on vectors.
The tangent line t and the tangent point T have a conjugate relationship to one another, which has been generalized into the idea of pole points and polar lines. The same reciprocal relation exists between a point P outside the circle and the secant line joining its two points of tangency.
With this in mind Descartes would construct a circle that was tangent to a given curve. He could then use the radius at the point of intersection to find the slope of a normal line, and from this one can easily find the slope of a tangent line. This was discovered about the same time as Fermat's method of adequality.
The gradient theorem states that if the vector field F is the gradient of some scalar-valued function (i.e., if F is conservative), then F is a path-independent vector field (i.e., the integral of F over some piecewise-differentiable curve is dependent only on end points). This theorem has a powerful converse:
Slope illustrated for y = (3/2)x − 1.Click on to enlarge Slope of a line in coordinates system, from f(x) = −12x + 2 to f(x) = 12x + 2. The slope of a line in the plane containing the x and y axes is generally represented by the letter m, [5] and is defined as the change in the y coordinate divided by the corresponding change in the x coordinate, between two distinct points on the line.
l = slope length α = angle of inclination. The grade (US) or gradient (UK) (also called stepth, slope, incline, mainfall, pitch or rise) of a physical feature, landform or constructed line is either the elevation angle of that surface to the horizontal or its tangent. It is a special case of the slope, where zero indicates horizontality. A ...
The curl of the gradient of any continuously twice-differentiable scalar field (i.e., differentiability class) is always the zero vector: =. It can be easily proved by expressing ∇ × ( ∇ φ ) {\displaystyle \nabla \times (\nabla \varphi )} in a Cartesian coordinate system with Schwarz's theorem (also called Clairaut's theorem on equality ...