Showing posts with label arc length formula. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arc length formula. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

How to find the arc length of a curve

The arc length is a topic from 10 grade math geometry,lets see the general definition for arc length after which we can see what is the arc length formula and how to use it.
A curve in, say, the plane can be approximated by connecting a finite number of points on the curve using line segments to create a polygonal path. Since it is straightforward to calculate the length of each linear segment (using the theorem of Pythagoras in Euclidean space, for example), the total length of the approximation can be found by summing the lengths of each linear segment.

This free online tutoring math will discuss this in more detail like,
If the curve is not already a polygonal path, better approximations to the curve can be obtained by following the shape of the curve increasingly more closely. The approach is to use an increasingly larger number of segments of smaller lengths. The lengths of the successive approximations do not decrease and will eventually keep increasing—possibly indefinitely, but for smooth curves this will tend to a limit as the lengths of the line segments get arbitrarily small.

For some curves there is a smallest number L that is an upper bound on the length of any polygonal approximation. If such a number exists, then the curve is said to be rectifiable and the curve is defined to have arc length

The arc length formula is s=rθ

where s is the arc , r is the radius of the circle and θ is the angle .