Spherical Image
In differential geometry, the spherical image of a unit-speed curve is given by taking the curve's tangent vectors as points, all of which must lie on the unit sphere In mathematics, a unit sphere is simply a sphere of radius one around a given center. More generally, it is the set of points of distance 1 from a fixed central point, where different norms can be used as general notions of "distance". A unit b .... The movement of the spherical image describes the changes in the original curve's directionO'Neill, B. ''Elementary Differential Geometry'', 1961, pg 71. If \alpha is a unit-speed curve, that is \, \alpha^\prime \, = 1, and T is the unit tangent vector field along \alpha, then the curve \sigma = T is the spherical image of \alpha. All points of \sigma must lie on the unit sphere because \, \sigma\, = \, T\, = 1. References Differential geometry {{differential-geometry-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Differential Geometry
Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multilinear algebra. The field has its origins in the study of spherical geometry as far back as antiquity. It also relates to astronomy, the geodesy of the Earth, and later the study of hyperbolic geometry by Lobachevsky. The simplest examples of smooth spaces are the plane and space curves and surfaces in the three-dimensional Euclidean space, and the study of these shapes formed the basis for development of modern differential geometry during the 18th and 19th centuries. Since the late 19th century, differential geometry has grown into a field concerned more generally with geometric structures on differentiable manifolds. A geometric structure is one which defines some notion of size, distance, shape, volume, or other rigidifying structu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Curve
In mathematics, a curve (also called a curved line in older texts) is an object similar to a line (geometry), line, but that does not have to be Linearity, straight. Intuitively, a curve may be thought of as the trace left by a moving point (geometry), point. This is the definition that appeared more than 2000 years ago in Euclid's Elements, Euclid's ''Elements'': "The [curved] line is […] the first species of quantity, which has only one dimension, namely length, without any width nor depth, and is nothing else than the flow or run of the point which […] will leave from its imaginary moving some vestige in length, exempt of any width." This definition of a curve has been formalized in modern mathematics as: ''A curve is the image (mathematics), image of an interval (mathematics), interval to a topological space by a continuous function''. In some contexts, the function that defines the curve is called a ''parametrization'', and the curve is a parametric curve. In this artic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tangent Vector
In mathematics, a tangent vector is a vector that is tangent to a curve or surface at a given point. Tangent vectors are described in the differential geometry of curves in the context of curves in R''n''. More generally, tangent vectors are elements of a tangent space of a differentiable manifold. Tangent vectors can also be described in terms of germs. Formally, a tangent vector at the point x is a linear derivation of the algebra defined by the set of germs at x. Motivation Before proceeding to a general definition of the tangent vector, we discuss its use in calculus and its tensor properties. Calculus Let \mathbf(t) be a parametric smooth curve. The tangent vector is given by \mathbf'(t), where we have used a prime instead of the usual dot to indicate differentiation with respect to parameter . The unit tangent vector is given by \mathbf(t) = \frac\,. Example Given the curve \mathbf(t) = \left\ in \R^3, the unit tangent vector at t = 0 is given by \mathbf(0) = \frac = ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Unit Sphere
In mathematics, a unit sphere is simply a sphere of radius one around a given center. More generally, it is the set of points of distance 1 from a fixed central point, where different norms can be used as general notions of "distance". A unit ball is the closed set of points of distance less than or equal to 1 from a fixed central point. Usually the center is at the origin of the space, so one speaks of "the unit ball" or "the unit sphere". Special cases are the unit circle and the unit disk. The importance of the unit sphere is that any sphere can be transformed to a unit sphere by a combination of translation and scaling. In this way the properties of spheres in general can be reduced to the study of the unit sphere. Unit spheres and balls in Euclidean space In Euclidean space of ''n'' dimensions, the -dimensional unit sphere is the set of all points (x_1, \ldots, x_n) which satisfy the equation : x_1^2 + x_2^2 + \cdots + x_n ^2 = 1. The ''n''-dimensional open unit ball ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |