Automated study of isoptic curves: a new approach with GeoGebra∗ Thierry Dana-Picard1 and Zoltan Kov´acs2 1 Jerusalem College of Technology, Israel
[email protected] 2 Private University College of Education of the Diocese of Linz, Austria
[email protected] March 7, 2018 Let C be a plane curve. For a given angle θ such that 0 ≤ θ ≤ 180◦, a θ-isoptic curve of C is the geometric locus of points in the plane through which pass a pair of tangents making an angle of θ.If θ = 90◦, the isoptic curve is called the orthoptic curve of C. For example, the orthoptic curves of conic sections are respectively the directrix of a parabola, the director circle of an ellipse, and the director circle of a hyperbola (in this case, its existence depends on the eccentricity of the hyperbola). Orthoptics and θ-isoptics can be studied for other curves than conics, in particular for closed smooth strictly convex curves,as in [1]. An example of the study of isoptics of a non-convex non-smooth curve, namely the isoptics of an astroid are studied in [2] and of Fermat curves in [3]. The Isoptics of an astroid present special properties: • There exist points through which pass 3 tangents to C, and two of them are perpendicular. • The isoptic curve are actually union of disjoint arcs. In Figure 1, the loops correspond to θ = 120◦ and the arcs connecting them correspond to θ = 60◦. Such a situation has been encountered already for isoptics of hyperbolas. These works combine geometrical experimentation with a Dynamical Geometry System (DGS) GeoGebra and algebraic computations with a Computer Algebra System (CAS).