This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Oval (geometry) is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
In geometry, an oval or ovoid (from Latin ovum, 'egg') is any curve resembling an egg or an ellipse. Unlike other curves, the term 'oval' is not well-defined and many distinct curves are commonly called ovals. These curves have in common that:
- they are differentiable (smooth-looking), simple (not self-intersecting), convex, closed, plane curves;
- their shape does not depart much from that of an ellipse, and
- there is at least one axis of symmetry.
The word ovoidal refers to the characteristic of being an ovoid.
Other examples of ovals described elsewhere include:
Contents |
Egg shape
The shape of an egg is approximately that of half each a prolate (long) and roughly spherical (potentially even minorly oblate/short) ellipsoid joined at the equator, sharing a principal axis of rotational symmetry, as illustrated above. Although the term egg-shaped usually implies a lack of reflection symmetry across the equatorial plane, it may also refer to true prolate ellipsoids. It can also be used to describe the 2-dimensional figure that, revolved around its major axis, produces the 3-dimensional surface.
Projective planes
In the theory of projective planes, oval is used to mean a set of q + 1 non-collinear points in PG(2,q), the projective plane over the finite field with q elements. See oval (projective plane).
In common English
In common speech 'oval' means a shape rather like an egg or an ellipse, and it may be two-dimenisonal or three-dimensional.
See also
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 28 August 2008, at 21:35.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Oval (geometry)".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.