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Plus Advent Calendar Door #20: Osculating the curve

Submitted by Marianne on 20 December, 2016

In the process of writing an article on curvature we got entirely distracted by making a geogebra worksheet showing the tangent, normal and osculating circle to any smooth function. The meaning and mathematics of all these terms is revealed in this article, but if you fancy getting your hands dirty yourself, have a play with the worksheet below. Please post your favourite function as a comment – the curvier and wigglier the better!

You can use this geogebra worksheet to see the tangent, normal and osculating circle of any smooth curve you choose - just change the equation f(x) in the left-hand panel.

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This article comes from our Maths in a minute library.

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