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  2. Tangent - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangent

    Tangent to a curve. The red line is tangential to the curve at the point marked by a red dot. Tangent plane to a sphere. In geometry, the tangent line (or simply tangent) to a plane curve at a given point is, intuitively, the straight line that "just touches" the curve at that point.

  3. Tangent lines to circles - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangent_lines_to_circles

    A tangent line t to a circle C intersects the circle at a single point T. For comparison, secant lines intersect a circle at two points, whereas another line may not intersect a circle at all. This property of tangent lines is preserved under many geometrical transformations, such as scalings, rotation, translations, inversions, and map ...

  4. Tangent half-angle formula - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangent_half-angle_formula

    Thus each of these angles has a rational value for its half-angle tangent, using tan φ/2 = sin φ / (1 + cos φ). The reverse is also true. If there are two positive angles that sum to 90°, each with a rational half-angle tangent, and the third angle is a right angle then a triangle with these interior angles can be scaled to a

  5. Small-angle approximation - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-angle_approximation

    The sine and tangent small-angle approximations are used in relation to the double-slit experiment or a diffraction grating to develop simplified equations like the following, where y is the distance of a fringe from the center of maximum light intensity, m is the order of the fringe, D is the distance between the slits and projection screen ...

  6. Tangential and normal components - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangential_and_normal...

    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.

  7. Tangent space - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangent_space

    In mathematics, the tangent space of a manifold is a generalization of tangent lines to curves in two-dimensional space and tangent planes to surfaces in three-dimensional space in higher dimensions. In the context of physics the tangent space to a manifold at a point can be viewed as the space of possible velocities for a particle moving on ...

  8. Tangential angle - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangential_angle

    In geometry, the tangential angle of a curve in the Cartesian plane, at a specific point, is the angle between the tangent line to the curve at the given point and the x-axis. [1] (Some authors define the angle as the deviation from the direction of the curve at some fixed starting point.

  9. Osculating circle - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osculating_circle

    It is tangent to the curve at that point and has the same curvature as the curve at that point. [2] The osculating circle provides a way to understand the local behavior of a curve and is commonly used in differential geometry and calculus.