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Radius of curvature and center of curvature. In differential geometry, the radius of curvature, R, is the reciprocal of the curvature. For a curve, it equals the radius of the circular arc which best approximates the curve at that point. For surfaces, the radius of curvature is the radius of a circle that best fits a normal section or ...
An ellipsoid is a surface that can be obtained from a sphere by deforming it by means of directional scalings, or more generally, of an affine transformation.. An ellipsoid is a quadric surface; that is, a surface that may be defined as the zero set of a polynomial of degree two in three variables.
For example, assuming the Earth is a sphere of radius 6371 km, the surface area of the arctic (north of the Arctic Circle, at latitude 66.56° as of August 2016 [7]) is 2π ⋅ 6371 2 | sin 90° − sin 66.56° | = 21.04 million km 2 (8.12 million sq mi), or 0.5 ⋅ | sin 90° − sin 66.56° | = 4.125% of the total surface area of the Earth.
The flattening value varies slightly from one reference ellipsoid to another, reflecting local conditions and whether the reference ellipsoid is intended to model the entire Earth or only some portion of it. A sphere has a single radius of curvature, which is simply the radius of the sphere. More complex surfaces have radii of curvature that ...
Curvature of general surfaces was first studied by Euler. In 1760 [4] he proved a formula for the curvature of a plane section of a surface and in 1771 [5] he considered surfaces represented in a parametric form. Monge laid down the foundations of their theory in his classical memoir L'application de l'analyse à la géometrie which appeared in ...
The sphere has the smallest surface area of all surfaces that enclose a given volume, and it encloses the largest volume among all closed surfaces with a given surface area. [11] The sphere therefore appears in nature: for example, bubbles and small water drops are roughly spherical because the surface tension locally minimizes surface area.
The basic quantities describing a sphere (meaning a 2-sphere, a 2-dimensional surface inside 3-dimensional space) will be denoted by the following variables r {\displaystyle r} is the radius, C = 2 π r {\displaystyle C=2\pi r} is the circumference (the length of any one of its great circles ),
When calculating the length of a short north-south line at the equator, the circle that best approximates that line has a radius of (which equals the meridian's semi-latus rectum), or 6335.439 km, while the spheroid at the poles is best approximated by a sphere of radius , or 6399.594 km, a 1% difference. So long as a spherical Earth is assumed ...