tangent line

noun

1. tangent.

Example Sentences

However, if you suddenly cut the string, the ball will fly off along that tangent line; in the same way, a baseball pitcher’s arm travels in an arc as he throws, but as soon as he lets go, the ball flies off on the tangent.

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As you reduce the distance between the points, the guess gets closer to the tangent line.

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Does the slope of the tangent line have any meaning?

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As another example, if you want to find out where a ball will come to rest at the bottom of a hill, you look for a point where the tangent line is horizontal.

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The steepness of the tangent line—its slope—has some important properties in physics: for instance, if you’ve got a curve that represents the position of, say, a bicycle, then the slope of the tangent line to that curve at any given point tells you how fast that bicycle is going when it reaches that spot.

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