User:Paul August/Subpage 22
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[edit] On the real line
A ray on the real line is an open set of the form , or A ray is also called a half line, or an open ray, to distinguish the notion of a closed ray, which includes its end point.
[edit] Properties
Suppose and
- if , and if p = q.
- if , and if p = q.
- if , and if p = q.
[edit] In a Euclidean space
Let be a line in and let p be a point lying on the We may parameterize (parameter ) so that An (open) ray ρ lying on with end point p is the set of points
If the inequality t > 0 is relaxed to in the above expression, then we have a closed ray. Note that if the inequality above were changed to t < 0 instead, we end up again with a ray lying on and end point p. It is a ray because we can reparameterize by using the parameter s = − t instead, so that
The difference between the two rays is that they point in the opposite directions. Therefore, in general, a ray can be characterized by
- a line,
- a point lying on the line, and
- a direction on the line.
Rays in an ordered geometry: Given two distinct points p,q in an ordered geometry (A,B) (A is the underlying incidence geometry and B is the strict betweenness relation defined on the points of A). The set
where denotes the open line segment with end points s and t, is called the (open) ray generated by p and q emanating from p. It is denoted by p in is called the source or the end point of the ray. A closed ray generated by p and q with endpoint p is the set Properties.
- for any point ,
- Failed to parse (PNG conversion failed;
check for correct installation of latex, dvips, gs, and convert): \overrightarrow{pq}\cup\overrightarrow{qp}=\overleftrightarrow{pq}
and We say that a ray lies on a line if all of the points in the ray are incident with the line. Also, a line segment lies on a ray if it is a subset of the ray. - The opposite ray of is defined to be
- The opposite ray − ρ of a ray ρ is ray. Suppose Then ρ has the property that
- and
- Failed to parse (PNG conversion failed;
check for correct installation of latex, dvips, gs, and convert): \rho\cup(-\rho)=\overleftrightarrow{pq}-\lbrace p\rbrace.
- Given any point p on a line , there are exactly two rays lying on with endpoint p.
- Given any two rays ρ and , exactly one of the following holds:
- ,
- a line segment, or
- a ray.
- An equivalence relation can be defined on the set of all rays lying on a line by whether they are pointing in the same direction or not. Thus, the set of all rays lying on can be partitioned into two subsets R and , so that if (or ), then they are pointing in the same direction; and if and are pointing in the opposite direction.
- Pick one of the two subsets from above, say R. Define on R by if Then is a linear order on R. This induces a linear order on the line in the following way: if the corresponding rays , with endpoints p and q respectively, we have This is one way to define a linear ordering on a line An alternative, but equivalent way of defining a linear ordering on a line in an ordered geometry can be found in the entry under ordered geometry.
- Note that in defining , we could have used instead of R. This is an example of the duality of linear ordering.
[edit] See also
- betweenness in rays
{{planetmath}}