Secant plane
- This article is about the cross-section of the sphere. For other uses, see Secant (disambiguation).
Animation showing the circular secant planes of the ellipsoid
A secant plane is a plane containing a nontrivial section of a sphere or an ellipsoid, or such a plane that a sphere is projected onto. Secant planes are similar to tangent planes, which contact the sphere's surface at a point, while secant planes contact the surface along curves.
The two-dimensional representations of secant planes are secant lines, the lines that join two distinct points on a curve.
Applications
Secant planes are used in map projections. The secant plane intersects a globe along a small circle with no distortion, forming a standard parallel which has true scale.[1]
See also
References
- ↑ "Map projection - types and distortion". geokov.com. Retrieved 2016-11-02.
External links
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/6/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.