Curve

For other uses, see Curve (disambiguation).

An arc or segment of a curve is a part of a curve that
In mathematics, a curve (also called a curved line is bounded by two distinct end points and contains every
point on the curve between its end points. Depending on
how the arc is dened, either of the two end points may
or may not be part of it. When the arc is straight, it is
typically called a line segment.

1 History

Megalithic art from Newgrange showing an early interest in

curves

A parabola, a simple example of a curve

in older texts) is, generally speaking, an object similar

to a line but which is not required to be straight. This
entails that a line is a special case of curve, namely a
curve with null curvature.[lower-alpha 1] Often curves in twodimensional (plane curves) or three-dimensional (space
curves) Euclidean space are of interest.

Fascination with curves began long before they were the

subject of mathematical study. This can be seen in
numerous examples of their decorative use in art and
on everyday objects dating back to prehistoric times.[1]
Curves, or at least their graphical representations, are
simple to create, for example by a stick in the sand on
a beach.

Various disciplines within mathematics have given the

term dierent meanings depending on the area of study,
so the precise meaning depends on context. However
many of these meanings are special instances of the denition which follows. A curve is a topological space which
is locally homeomorphic to a line. In everyday language,
this means that a curve is a set of points which, near each
of its points, looks like a line, up to a deformation. A
simple example of a curve is the parabola, shown to the
right. A large number of other curves have been studied
in multiple mathematical elds.

Historically, the term line was used in place of the more

modern term curve. Hence the phrases straight line
and right line were used to distinguish what are today
called lines from curved lines. For example, in Book
I of Euclids Elements, a line is dened as a breadthless
length (Def. 2), while a straight line is dened as a
line that lies evenly with the points on itself (Def. 4).
Euclids idea of a line is perhaps claried by the statement
The extremities of a line are points, (Def. 3).[2] Later
commentators further classied lines according to various
schemes. For example:[3]

Closely related meanings are "graph of a function"

(as in "Phillips curve") and "two-dimensional or threedimensional graph without a kink.

Composite lines (lines forming an angle)

Incomposite lines
Determinate (lines that do not extend indenitely, such as the circle)

In non-mathematical language, the term is often used

metaphorically, as in "learning curve".
1

2
Indeterminate (lines that extend indenitely,
such as the straight line and the parabola)

TOPOLOGY

2
2

The curves created by slicing a cone (conic sections) were among

the curves studied in ancient Greece.

Analytic geometry allowed curves, such as the Folium of

Descartes, to be dened using equations instead of geometrical
construction.

The Greek geometers had studied many other kinds of

curves. One reason was their interest in solving geometrical problems that could not be solved using standard
compass and straightedge construction. These curves in- the problem of a hanging chain, the sort of question that
clude:
became routinely accessible by means of dierential calculus.
The conic sections, deeply studied by Apollonius of
In the eighteenth century came the beginnings of the thePerga
ory of plane algebraic curves, in general. Newton had
The cissoid of Diocles, studied by Diocles and used studied the cubic curves, in the general description of the
real points into 'ovals. The statement of Bzouts theoas a method to double the cube.[4]
rem showed a number of aspects which were not directly
The conchoid of Nicomedes, studied by Nicomedes accessible to the geometry of the time, to do with singular
as a method to both double the cube and to trisect points and complex solutions.
an angle.[5]
From the nineteenth century there is not a separate
The Archimedean spiral, studied by Archimedes as curve theory, but rather the appearance of curves as
a method to trisect an angle and square the circle.[6] the one-dimensional aspect of projective geometry, and
dierential geometry; and later topology, when for exam The spiric sections, sections of tori studied by ple the Jordan curve theorem was understood to lie quite
Perseus as sections of cones had been studied by deep, as well as being required in complex analysis. The
Apollonius.
era of the space-lling curves nally provoked the modern denitions of curve.
A fundamental advance in the theory of curves was the
advent of analytic geometry in the seventeenth century.
This enabled a curve to be described using an equation
rather than an elaborate geometrical construction. This 2 Topology
not only allowed new curves to be dened and studied, but
it enabled a formal distinction to be made between curves
that can be dened using algebraic equations, algebraic In topology, a curve is dened as follows. Let I be an
curves, and those that cannot, transcendental curves. Pre- interval of real numbers (i.e. a non-empty connected
viously, curves had been described as geometrical or subset of R ). Then a curve is a continuous mapping
mechanical according to how they were, or supposedly : I X , where X is a topological space.
could be, generated.[1]
Conic sections were applied in astronomy by Kepler.
Newton also worked on an early example in the calculus
of variations. Solutions to variational problems, such
as the brachistochrone and tautochrone questions, introduced properties of curves in new ways (in this case, the
cycloid). The catenary gets its name as the solution to

The curve is said to be simple, or a Jordan arc,

if it is injective, i.e. if for all x , y in I , we have
(x) = (y) implies x = y . If I is a closed
bounded interval [a, b] , we also allow the possibility
(a) = (b) (this convention makes it possible to
talk about closed simple curves, see below).

3 Conventions and terminology

Boundaries of 53 hyperbolic components of Mandelbrot set made in 13sec

1.5

The distinction between a curve and its image is important. Two distinct curves may have the same image. For
example, a line segment can be traced out at dierent
speeds, or a circle can be traversed a dierent number
of times. Many times, however, we are just interested in
the image of the curve. It is important to pay attention to
context and convention in reading.

c.im

0.5

-0.5

-1

-1.5

-2

-1.5

-1

-0.5

0.5

Terminology is also not uniform. Often, topologists use

the term "path" for what we are calling a curve, and
curve for what we are calling the image of a curve.
The term curve is more common in vector calculus and
dierential geometry.

c.re
one period 1 component = {c:c=(2*w-w*w)/4}
one period 2 component = {c:c=(w/4 -1)}
three period 3 components (blue)
six period 4 components (magenta)
fifteen period 5 components (black)
27 period 6 components (black)

Boundaries of hyperbolic components of Mandelbrot set as

closed curves

4 Lengths of curves
Main article: Arc length

In other words this curve does not cross itself and has no If X is a metric space with metric d , then we can dene
the length of a curve : [a, b] X by
missing points.[7]

{ n
If (x) = (y) for some x = y (other than the

d((ti ), (ti1 )) : n N and a = t0 < t1 < <

extremities of I ), then (x) is called a double (or length() = sup
i=1
multiple) point of the curve.
A curve is said to be closed or a loop if I = [a, b]
and if (a) = (b) . A closed curve is thus a
continuous mapping of the circle S 1 ; a simple
closed curve is also called a Jordan curve. The
Jordan curve theorem states that such curves divide
the plane into an interior and an exterior.

where the sup is over all n and all partitions t0 < t1 <
< tn of [a, b] .
A rectiable curve is a curve with nite length. A
parametrization of is called natural (or unit speed or
parametrised by arc length) if for any t1 , t2 in [a, b] ,
we have

A plane curve is a curve for which X is the Euclidean

planethese are the examples rst encounteredor in
some cases the projective plane. A space curve is a curve
for which X is of three dimensions, usually Euclidean
space; a skew curve is a space curve which lies in no
plane. These denitions also apply to algebraic curves
(see below). However, in the case of algebraic curves it
is very common to consider number systems more general
than the reals.

length(|[t1 ,t2 ] ) = |t2 t1 |.

This denition of curve captures our intuitive notion

of a curve as a connected, continuous geometric gure
that is like a line, without thickness and drawn without interruption, although it also includes gures that can
hardly be called curves in common usage. For example, the image of a curve can cover a square in the plane
(space-lling curve). The image of simple plane curve
can have Hausdor dimension bigger than one (see Koch
snowake) and even positive Lebesgue measure[8] (the
last example can be obtained by small variation of the
Peano curve construction). The dragon curve is another
unusual example.

and then

If is a Lipschitz-continuous function, then it is automatically rectiable. Moreover, in this case, one can dene
the speed (or metric derivative) of at t0 as

speed(t0 ) = lim sup

tt0

d((t), (t0 ))
|t t0 |

length() =

speed(t) dt.
a

In particular, if X = Rn is an Euclidean space and :

[a, b] Rn is dierentiable then

length() =
a

| (t)| dt.

Dierential geometry

Main article: Dierential geometry of curves

While the rst examples of curves that are met are mostly
plane curves (that is, in everyday words, curved lines in
two-dimensional space), there are obvious examples such
as the helix which exist naturally in three dimensions.
The needs of geometry, and also for example classical
mechanics are to have a notion of curve in space of any
number of dimensions. In general relativity, a world line
is a curve in spacetime.
If X is a dierentiable manifold, then we can dene the
notion of dierentiable curve in X . This general idea
is enough to cover many of the applications of curves in
mathematics. From a local point of view one can take X
to be Euclidean space. On the other hand it is useful to be
more general, in that (for example) it is possible to dene
the tangent vectors to X by means of this notion of curve.

ALGEBRAIC CURVE

for all t . The map 2 is called a reparametrisation of 1 ;

and this makes an equivalence relation on the set of all C k
dierentiable curves in X . A C k arc is an equivalence
class of C k curves under the relation of reparametrisation.

6 Algebraic curve
Main article: Algebraic curve

Algebraic curves are the curves considered in algebraic

geometry. A plane algebraic curve is the locus of the
points of coordinates x, y such that f(x, y) = 0, where
If X is a smooth manifold, a smooth curve in X is a f is a polynomial in two variables dened over some eld
F. Algebraic geometry normally looks not only on points
smooth map
with coordinates in F but on all the points with coordinates in an algebraically closed eld K. If C is a curve dened by a polynomial f with coecients in F, the curve
: I X.
is said dened over F. The points of the curve C with coThis is a basic notion. There are less and more restricted ordinates in a eld G are said rational over G and can be
ideas, too. If X is a C k manifold (i.e., a manifold whose denoted C(G)); thus the full curve C = C(K).
charts are k times continuously dierentiable), then a C k Algebraic curves can also be space curves, or curves in
curve in X is such a curve which is only assumed to be even higher dimension, obtained as the intersection (comC k (i.e. k times continuously dierentiable). If X is an mon solution set) of more than one polynomial equation
analytic manifold (i.e. innitely dierentiable and charts in more than two variables. By eliminating variables (by
are expressible as power series), and is an analytic map, any tool of elimination theory), an algebraic curve may
then is said to be an analytic curve.
be projected onto a plane algebraic curve, which howA dierentiable curve is said to be regular if its derivative ever may introduce singularities such as cusps or double
never vanishes. (In words, a regular curve never slows to points.
a stop or backtracks on itself.) Two C k dierentiable A plane curve may also be completed in a curve in the
curves
projective plane: if a curve is dened by a polynomial
f of total degree d, then wd f(u/w, v/w) simplies to a
homogeneous polynomial g(u, v, w) of degree d. The values of u, v, w such that g(u, v, w) = 0 are the homogeneous
1 : I X
coordinates of the points of the completion of the curve
2 : J X
in the projective plane and the points of the initial curve
k
are those such w is not zero. An example is the Fermat
are said to be equivalent if there is a bijective C map
curve un + vn = wn , which has an ane form xn + yn = 1.
A similar process of homogenization may be dened for
curves in higher dimensional spaces
p:J I
Important examples of algebraic curves are the conics,
such that the inverse map
which are nonsingular curves of degree two and genus
zero, and elliptic curves, which are nonsingular curves of
genus one studied in number theory and which have important applications to cryptography. Because algebraic
p1 : I J
curves in elds of characteristic zero are most often studis also C k , and
ied over the complex numbers, algebraic curves in algebraic geometry may be considered as real surfaces. In
particular, the non-singular complex projective algebraic
2 (t) = 1 (p(t))
curves are called Riemann surfaces.

See also

Notes

[1] In current language, a line is typically required to be

straight. Historically, however, lines could be curved
or straight.

References

[1] Lockwood p. ix
[2] Heath p. 153
[3] Heath p. 160
[4] Lockwood p. 132
[5] Lockwood p. 129
[6] O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., Spiral of
Archimedes, MacTutor History of Mathematics archive,
University of St Andrews.
[7] Jordan arc denition at Dictionary.com.
Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. Dictionary.reference.com. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
[8] Osgood, William F. (January 1903). A Jordan Curve of
Positive Area. Transactions of the American Mathematical Society (American Mathematical Society) 4 (1): 107
112. doi:10.2307/1986455. ISSN 0002-9947. JSTOR
1986455.

A.S. Parkhomenko (2001), Line (curve)", in

Hazewinkel, Michiel, Encyclopedia of Mathematics,
Springer, ISBN 978-1-55608-010-4
B.I. Golubov (2001), Rectiable curve, in
Hazewinkel, Michiel, Encyclopedia of Mathematics,
Springer, ISBN 978-1-55608-010-4
Euclid, commentary and trans. by T. L. Heath Elements Vol. 1 (1908 Cambridge) Google Books
E. H. Lockwood A Book of Curves (1961 Cambridge)

10

External links

Famous Curves Index, School of Mathematics and

Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland
Mathematical curves A collection of 874 twodimensional mathematical curves
Gallery of Space Curves Made from Circles, includes animations by Peter Moses
Gallery of Bishop Curves and Other Spherical
Curves, includes animations by Peter Moses

The Encyclopedia of Mathematics article on lines.

The Manifold Atlas page on 1-manifolds.

11

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