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In geometry, a straight line, usually abbreviated line, is an infinitely long object with no width, depth, or curvature, an idealization of such physical objects as a straightedge, a taut string, or a ray of light. Lines are spaces of dimension one, which may be embedded in spaces of dimension two, three, or higher.
These two charts provide a second atlas for the circle, with the transition map = (that is, one has this relation between s and t for every point where s and t are both nonzero). Each chart omits a single point, either (−1, 0) for s or (+1, 0) for t, so neither chart alone is sufficient to cover the whole circle. It can be proved that it is ...
In geometry, a line segment is a part of a straight line that is bounded by two distinct endpoints (its extreme points), and contains every point on the line that is between its endpoints. It is a special case of an arc , with zero curvature .
In this system, an arbitrary point O (the origin) is chosen on a given line. The coordinate of a point P is defined as the signed distance from O to P, where the signed distance is the distance taken as positive or negative depending on which side of the line P lies. Each point is given a unique coordinate and each real number is the coordinate ...
It provided an 'atomic' definition of the geometric point, stating that a line is separated into parts, and the part which has no remaining parts (i.e. cannot be divided into smaller parts) and thus forms the extreme end of a line is a point. [23]
Hence the terms straight line and right line were used to distinguish what are today called lines from curved lines. For example, in Book I of Euclid's Elements , a line is defined as a "breadthless length" (Def. 2), while a straight line is defined as "a line that lies evenly with the points on itself" (Def. 4).
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1135 – Sharafeddin Tusi followed al-Khayyam's application of algebra to geometry, and wrote a treatise on cubic equations which "represents an essential contribution to another algebra which aimed to study curves by means of equations, thus inaugurating the beginning of algebraic geometry." [2]