7.D. Stereographic projections University of （7. d。）.pdfVIP

7.D. Stereographic projections In the main notes for this unit we mentioned that the 13th century scholar Jordanus Nemorarius made a noteworthy contribution about the relationship between plane and spherical geometry, and our purpose here is to explain this more precisely with references for mathematical proofs. The levels of the proofs are slightly above the level of this course (in particular, they require input from linear algebra), but the main points can be explained relatively simply. Geometrical and algebraic definitions The stereographic projection is a function which sends points on a sphere to points on a plane, and in fact it is a 1 – 1 correspondence between the plane and all points on the sphere except one. For the sake of definiteness take a standard sphere whose north and south poles are denoted by N and S respectively, and take the plane which is tangent to the sphere at the south pole. Then the stereographic projection of a point P ≠≠ N will be the point P ′ where the ≠≠ line joining N and P meets the tangent plane. (Source: /StereographicProjection.html) Stereographic projection is frequently employed to create maps of the earth’s surface centered at one of the poles (there is a picture later in this document). The construction was essentially nd known to Greek mathematicians like Hipparchus of Rhodes in the 2 century B.C.E. , and it probably even dates back to ancient Egyptian mathematics. Describing the stereographic projection and its inverse in terms of coordinates turns out to be a fairly straightforward exercise in coordinate geometry. Again for the sake of definiteness, we shall take th