Definition of Stereographic projection

Lab Background

Lab Activity

Geometry on the Sphere

Do each activity on the physical (Lenart) sphere and also with Sketchpad on the stereographic map of the sphere. An S-point is a point on the Sphere. In sketchpad there is given a circle e with center S passing through R.

  1. Two S-points determine a unique great circle (unless the points are an antipodal pair). Given two S-points A and B construct a great circle through A and B. (In other words, construct a Euclidean circle through A, B and the antipodal point of A. In this Sketchpad exercise you can leave off the special case when the great circle is a Euclidean line. Make a script gcAB that takes as givens, the points A, B and E and R..

  2. There is a unique great circle through a given S-point that is orthogonal to a given S-circle m (unless the point is a center of the circle). In a sketch construct a circle m with (Euclidean) center A through B and a point C, construct a great circle n through C that is orthogonal to m. (Note two possible cases: C is on m and C is not on m. Can you handle both with one sketch?) Make a script Sperp that takes as givens the points A, B, C and E and R. [Note: This great circle is one diameter of m. In the case that m is a great circle, this is the construction of a perpendicular "line".

  3. Given a circle c, construct the S-center of c using the diameters from 2.

  4. Given S-points A and and B, construct an S-circle with S-center A through B. Then also construct the S-circle with S-center B through A. Let C be one of the intersections points of the two circles. Now construct the 3 great circles AB, BC, CA and measure the angles at the vertices. Are the angles equal? Do the angles stay the same when you move A and B?

  5. Construct the perpendicular bisecting great circle of a great circle "segment" AB.

Wulff Nets and other nets

Imagine a globe with parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude spaced at 15-degree intervals. Reference for nets is on this page.

Web References

 

Additional Links

http://www.math.washington.edu/~king/coursedir/m497w01/as/as03.html


Online books linked from Peter Doyle