- #1
etotheipi
Let's say we have a curve in 2D space that we can represent in both cartesian and polar coordinates, i.e. ##y = y(x)## and ##r = r(\theta)##. If you want the tangent at any point ##(x,y) = (a,b)## on the curve you can just do the first order Taylor expansion at that point $$y(x) = y'(a)x + (b-ay'(a))$$and you get a straight line of gradient equal to that of the curve at the point. But you could also do the same thing with ##r## and ##\theta##, if I just let ##\theta_0## to be the value of ##\theta## at the point ##(x,y) = (a,b)##, i.e. $$r(\theta) = r'(\theta_0)\theta + (r(\theta_0)-\theta_0 r'(\theta_0))$$ This would also be a straight line just touching the curve if it were drawn on an ##(\theta, r)## graph, but on an ##(x,y)## graph it's going to be a weird curve of some variety (Archimedean spiral?). With that said, is the second curve still classed as a tangent to the original curve at the point? You could do lots other things as well, like having ##y## as a function of ##\theta##, or ##x## as a function of ##r##, and come up with lots of different "tangents", though they wouldn't necessarily be straight lines.
So I wondered whether a tangent is a first order representation of the function whose value is identical only at the specified point, in which case all of those examples would be "tangents", or whether only the ##y(x) = y'(a)x + (b-ay'(a))## would be a tangent? And then even if the former is true, are the other forms ever useful? Thank you!
So I wondered whether a tangent is a first order representation of the function whose value is identical only at the specified point, in which case all of those examples would be "tangents", or whether only the ##y(x) = y'(a)x + (b-ay'(a))## would be a tangent? And then even if the former is true, are the other forms ever useful? Thank you!
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