Find equation of circle passing through intersection of circle S = x 2 </ms

Dayanara Terry

Dayanara Terry

Answered question

2022-07-02

Find equation of circle passing through intersection of circle
S = x 2 + y 2 12 x 4 y 10 = 0
and
L : 3 x + y = 10 and having radius equal to that of circle S.

Answer & Explanation

Miguidi4y

Miguidi4y

Beginner2022-07-03Added 13 answers

Step 1
Let A,B be the intersection points of S and L; in other words S ( A ) = S ( B ) = L ( A ) = L ( B ) = 0 . Then for any t we also have ( S + t L ) ( A ) = ( S + t L ) ( B ) = 0 , thet is S + t L passes through A and B. You seem to be asking why these are all the circles that pass through A and B. I think this is usually explained via linear algebra. Very roughly speaking, a general circle looks like x 2 + y 2 + a x + b y + c = 0 , with 3 coefficients, so "the degree of freedom" is 3. If you require a circle to pass through A,B then you impose two constraints, so "there is only 1 degree of freedom left". Since our t was arbitrary, that's exactly the degree of freedom left
Frederick Kramer

Frederick Kramer

Beginner2022-07-04Added 7 answers

Step 1
To begin with, I think that you copied the equation wrong with an extra = 0 ; it should be
x 2 + y 2 1 2 x 4 y 1 0 + 2 t ( 3 x + y 1 0 ) = 0 .
And then the next line should be
x 2 + 2 ( 3 t 6 ) x + 2 ( 2 + t ) y ( 1 0 + 2 0 t ) = 0
with 20t instead of 2t.
The t here is called a Lagrange multiplier (after Joseph-Louis Lagrange, although he was not the first to use them); it's often written λ (which I think stands for Lagrange, although I'm not sure). This is often taught in a multivariable Calculus course to find extreme values of functions of several variables under constraints; but as you can see, it has other uses. I'll continue to use t in this answer.
When t = 0 , we get the original circle S; but for other values of t we get other circles; and as t , the circle gets closer and closer to the line L. (There are versions of this technique where you put a multiplier in front of each expression, so
s ( x 2 + y 2 1 2 x 4 y 1 0 ) + t ( 3 x + y 1 0 ) = 0
so that you can recover both original curves exactly for certain values of the multipliers. But it's usually enough just to have one multiplier; and in this case, it's convenient not to have s so that you can say that every one of these curves is a circle.)
Now, every one of these circles passes through the point where S intersects L. This is by design, because the equation is
[ expression which is  0  on  S ] + 2 t [ expression which is  0  on  L ] = 0 ,
so any point that is on both S and L will give
0 + 2 t 0 = 0
You are asked to find a circle through that point with the same radius as S, and here you have a whole family of circles through that point, so you just have to figure out the radius (as a function of t) and solve for t. Of course, one of the solutions gives you S again, so you pick the other solution.
Hopefully your instructor would explain all of this, but once you get used to it, you just set up
[ first equation ] + t [ second equation ] = 0
to get a family of related curves through the points where two original curves meet, without thinking very much about it.
(Your professor also used 2t instead of t, which I think was just to make it easier to complete the square when calculating the radius. I don't know any systematic reason to use 2t. But since the line is given equally well by
3 x + y 1 0 = 0 or by 2 ( 3 x + y 1 ) = 0 , it makes no difference in the end.)

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