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The distance between two points in physical space is the length of a straight line between them, which is the shortest possible path. This is the usual meaning of distance in classical physics, including Newtonian mechanics. Straight-line distance is formalized mathematically as the Euclidean distance in two- and three-dimensional space.
Euclidean distance. In mathematics, the Euclidean distance between two points in Euclidean space is the length of the line segment between them. It can be calculated from the Cartesian coordinates of the points using the Pythagorean theorem, and therefore is occasionally called the Pythagorean distance . These names come from the ancient Greek ...
The distance from (x 0, y 0) to this line is measured along a vertical line segment of length |y 0 − (− c / b)| = |by 0 + c| / |b| in accordance with the formula. Similarly, for vertical lines (b = 0) the distance between the same point and the line is |ax 0 + c| / |a|, as measured along a horizontal line segment. Line defined by two points
Geographical distance or geodetic distance is the distance measured along the surface of the Earth, or the shortest arch length. The formulae in this article calculate distances between points which are defined by geographical coordinates in terms of latitude and longitude .
In Euclidean space, the distance from a point to a plane is the distance between a given point and its orthogonal projection on the plane, the perpendicular distance to the nearest point on the plane. It can be found starting with a change of variables that moves the origin to coincide with the given point then finding the point on the shifted ...
The great-circle distance, orthodromic distance, or spherical distance is the distance along a great circle . It is the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a sphere, measured along the surface of the sphere (as opposed to a straight line through the sphere's interior). The distance between two points in Euclidean space is the ...
Vincenty's formulae. Vincenty's formulae are two related iterative methods used in geodesy to calculate the distance between two points on the surface of a spheroid, developed by Thaddeus Vincenty (1975a). They are based on the assumption that the figure of the Earth is an oblate spheroid, and hence are more accurate than methods that assume a ...
In mathematics, a metric space is a set together with a notion of distance between its elements, usually called points. The distance is measured by a function called a metric or distance function. [1] Metric spaces are the most general setting for studying many of the concepts of mathematical analysis and geometry .