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EntityQ426301· pop 36· linked from 164 articles

secant line

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line that intersects a curve at least twice

Wikidata facts

Subclass of
line
Image
Bhedika-formula.png
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Commons category
Circle and lines
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WikiProject Mathematics
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via Wikidata · CC0

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Encyclopedic overview

In geometry, a secant is a line that intersects a curve at a minimum of two distinct points. The word secant comes from the Latin word secare, meaning "to cut". In the case of a circle, a secant intersects the circle at exactly two points. A chord is the line segment determined by the two points, that is, the interval on the secant whose ends are the two points.

Circles

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “secant line” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.