The Basics of Circles
Mathematicians like to define things before they start talking about them. This is a good idea in other areas of life too. Ever brought a cake pan to a baseball game because you heard there would b...
Arcs
Central angles give rise to another concept that we call the arc. Not ark, as in Raiders of the Lost Ark. More like Noah's ark…but only slightly.It's hard to define what arcs are formally. Bow ti...
Chords
Fun activity time! You'll need a hula-hoop and several huge rubber bands big enough to stretch all the way across the hula-hoop. If you don't have those things, that's fine too. You can just imagin...
Inscribed Angles
Let's say you're sharing a pizza with three friends. You order from Inconvenient Pizzas, Inc. because their commercials say their prices are "Unbeatably Low!" Two hours later than promised, a ni...
Tangents and Secants
Lines and circles tend to avoid each other, because they kind of freak each other out. Lines don't care for the weird curviness a circle has, while circles are mystified by the fact that a line...
Circles on the Coordinate Plane
Let's take a look at (surprise, surprise) a circle.We don't know anything about this circle. Sure, we've spent almost a whole chapter learning about properties of circles in general, but we don't k...