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Rhumb Lines
In navigation, a rhumb line, rhumb (), or loxodrome is an arc crossing all meridians of longitude at the same angle, that is, a path with constant azimuth ( bearing as measured relative to true north). Navigation on a fixed course (i.e., steering the vessel to follow a constant cardinal direction) would result in a rhumb-line track. Introduction The effect of following a rhumb line course on the surface of a globe was first discussed by the Portuguese mathematician Pedro Nunes in 1537, in his ''Treatise in Defense of the Marine Chart'', with further mathematical development by Thomas Harriot in the 1590s. A rhumb line can be contrasted with a great circle, which is the path of shortest distance between two points on the surface of a sphere. On a great circle, the bearing to the destination point does not remain constant. If one were to drive a car along a great circle one would hold the steering wheel fixed, but to follow a rhumb line one would have to turn the wheel, ...
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Great Circle
In mathematics, a great circle or orthodrome is the circular intersection of a sphere and a plane passing through the sphere's center point. Discussion Any arc of a great circle is a geodesic of the sphere, so that great circles in spherical geometry are the natural analog of straight lines in Euclidean space. For any pair of distinct non- antipodal points on the sphere, there is a unique great circle passing through both. (Every great circle through any point also passes through its antipodal point, so there are infinitely many great circles through two antipodal points.) The shorter of the two great-circle arcs between two distinct points on the sphere is called the ''minor arc'', and is the shortest surface-path between them. Its arc length is the great-circle distance between the points (the intrinsic distance on a sphere), and is proportional to the measure of the central angle formed by the two points and the center of the sphere. A great circle is the largest ...
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Spanish Language
Spanish () or Castilian () is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a world language, global language with 483 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain, and about 558 million speakers total, including second-language speakers. Spanish is the official language of List of countries where Spanish is an official language, 20 countries, as well as one of the Official languages of the United Nations, six official languages of the United Nations. Spanish is the world's list of languages by number of native speakers, second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's list of languages by total number of speakers, fourth-most spoken language overall after English language, English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani language, Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language ...
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Ancient Greek Language
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek Dark Ages, Dark Ages (), the Archaic Greece, Archaic or Homeric Greek, Homeric period (), and the Classical Greece, Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athens, fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and Ancient Greek philosophy, philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Homeric Greek, Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regar ...
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Cosine
In mathematics, sine and cosine are trigonometric functions of an angle. The sine and cosine of an acute angle are defined in the context of a right triangle: for the specified angle, its sine is the ratio of the length of the side opposite that angle to the length of the longest side of the triangle (the hypotenuse), and the cosine is the ratio of the length of the adjacent leg to that of the hypotenuse. For an angle \theta, the sine and cosine functions are denoted as \sin(\theta) and \cos(\theta). The definitions of sine and cosine have been extended to any real number, real value in terms of the lengths of certain line segments in a unit circle. More modern definitions express the sine and cosine as Series (mathematics), infinite series, or as the solutions of certain differential equations, allowing their extension to arbitrary positive and negative values and even to complex numbers. The sine and cosine functions are commonly used to model periodic function, periodic pheno ...
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Sphere
A sphere (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ) is a surface (mathematics), surface analogous to the circle, a curve. In solid geometry, a sphere is the Locus (mathematics), set of points that are all at the same distance from a given point in three-dimensional space.. That given point is the center (geometry), ''center'' of the sphere, and the distance is the sphere's ''radius''. The earliest known mentions of spheres appear in the work of the Greek mathematics, ancient Greek mathematicians. The sphere is a fundamental surface in many fields of mathematics. Spheres and nearly-spherical shapes also appear in nature and industry. Bubble (physics), Bubbles such as soap bubbles take a spherical shape in equilibrium. The Earth is spherical Earth, often approximated as a sphere in geography, and the celestial sphere is an important concept in astronomy. Manufactured items including pressure vessels and most curved mirrors and lenses are based on spheres. Spheres rolling, roll smoothly in ...
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Logarithmic Spiral
A logarithmic spiral, equiangular spiral, or growth spiral is a self-similarity, self-similar spiral curve that often appears in nature. The first to describe a logarithmic spiral was Albrecht Dürer (1525) who called it an "eternal line" ("ewige Linie"). More than a century later, the curve was discussed by René Descartes, Descartes (1638), and later extensively investigated by Jacob Bernoulli, who called it ''Spira mirabilis'', "the marvelous spiral". The logarithmic spiral is distinct from the Archimedean spiral in that the distances between the turnings of a logarithmic spiral increase in a geometric progression, whereas for an Archimedean spiral these distances are constant. Definition In polar coordinates (r, \varphi) the logarithmic spiral can be written as r = ae^,\quad \varphi \in \R, or \varphi = \frac \ln \frac, with e (mathematical constant), e being the base of natural logarithms, and a > 0, k\ne 0 being real constants. In Cartesian coordinates The logarithmi ...
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Geographical Pole
A geographical pole or geographic pole is either of the two points on Earth where its axis of rotation intersects its surface. The North Pole lies in the Arctic Ocean while the South Pole is in Antarctica. North and South poles are also defined for other planets or satellites in the Solar System, with a North pole being on the same side of the invariable plane as Earth's North pole. Relative to Earth's surface, the geographic poles move by a few metres over periods of a few years. This is a combination of Chandler wobble, a free oscillation with a period of about 433 days; an annual motion responding to seasonal movements of air and water masses; and an irregular drift towards the 80th west meridian (geography), meridian. As cartography requires exact and unchanging coordinates, the averaged locations of geographical poles are taken as fixed ''cartographic poles'' and become the points where the body's great circles of longitude intersect. See also * Earth's rotation * Polar mo ...
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Equiangular Spiral
A logarithmic spiral, equiangular spiral, or growth spiral is a self-similar spiral curve that often appears in nature. The first to describe a logarithmic spiral was Albrecht Dürer (1525) who called it an "eternal line" ("ewige Linie"). More than a century later, the curve was discussed by Descartes (1638), and later extensively investigated by Jacob Bernoulli, who called it ''Spira mirabilis'', "the marvelous spiral". The logarithmic spiral is distinct from the Archimedean spiral in that the distances between the turnings of a logarithmic spiral increase in a geometric progression, whereas for an Archimedean spiral these distances are constant. Definition In polar coordinates (r, \varphi) the logarithmic spiral can be written as r = ae^,\quad \varphi \in \R, or \varphi = \frac \ln \frac, with e being the base of natural logarithms, and a > 0, k\ne 0 being real constants. In Cartesian coordinates The logarithmic spiral with the polar equation r = a e^ can be represen ...
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Stereographic Projection
In mathematics, a stereographic projection is a perspective transform, perspective projection of the sphere, through a specific point (geometry), point on the sphere (the ''pole'' or ''center of projection''), onto a plane (geometry), plane (the ''projection plane'') perpendicular to the diameter through the point. It is a smooth function, smooth, bijection, bijective function (mathematics), function from the entire sphere except the center of projection to the entire plane. It maps circle of a sphere, circles on the sphere to generalised circle, circles or lines on the plane, and is conformal map, conformal, meaning that it preserves angles at which curves meet and thus Local property, locally approximately preserves similarity (geometry), shapes. It is neither isometry, isometric (distance preserving) nor Equiareal map, equiareal (area preserving). The stereographic projection gives a way to representation (mathematics), represent a sphere by a plane. The metric tensor, metric ...
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South Pole
The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is the point in the Southern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True South Pole to distinguish from the south magnetic pole. The South Pole is by definition the southernmost point on the Earth, lying antipode (geography), antipodally to the North Pole. It defines geodetic latitude 90° South, as well as the direction of true south. At the South Pole all directions point North; all lines of longitude converge there, so its longitude can be defined as any degree value. No time zone has been assigned to the South Pole, so any time can be used as the local time. Along tight latitude circles, clockwise is east and counterclockwise is west. The South Pole is at the center of the Southern Hemisphere. Situated on the continent of Antarctica, it is the site of the United States Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, which was established in 19 ...
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North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the North magnetic pole, Magnetic North Pole. The North Pole is by definition the northernmost point on the Earth, lying antipode (geography), antipodally to the South Pole. It defines geodetic latitude 90° North, as well as the direction of true north. At the North Pole all directions point south; all lines of longitude converge there, so its longitude can be defined as any degree value. No time zone has been assigned to the North Pole, so any time can be used as the local time. Along tight latitude circles, counterclockwise is east and clockwise is west. The North Pole is at the center of the Northern Hemisphere. The nearest land is usually said to be Kaffeklubben Island, off the northern coast of Greenland about away, though ...
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