Perpendicular

In elementary geometry, perpendicular is the adjectival form of perpendicularity, which is the relationship between two lines that meet at a right angle (90 degrees). The characteristic extends to other related geometric objects.

Geometry
Projecting a sphere to a plane
Outline History
Branches Euclidean Non-Euclidean Elliptic Spherical Hyperbolic Non-Archimedean geometry Projective Affine Synthetic Analytic Algebraic Arithmetic Diophantine Differential Riemannian Symplectic Discrete differential Complex Finite Discrete/Combinatorial Digital Convex Computational Fractal Incidence
Concepts Features Dimension Straightedge and compass constructions Angle Curve Diagonal Orthogonality (Perpendicular) Parallel Vertex Congruence Similarity Symmetry
Zero-dimensional Point
One-dimensional Line segment ray Length
Two-dimensional Plane Area Polygon Triangle Altitude Hypotenuse Pythagorean theorem Parallelogram Square Rectangle Rhombus Rhomboid Quadrilateral Trapezoid Kite Circle Diameter Circumference Area
Three-dimensional Volume Cube cuboid Cylinder Pyramid Sphere
Four- / other-dimensional Tesseract Hypersphere
Geometers
by name Aida Aryabhata Ahmes Alhazen Apollonius Archimedes Atiyah Baudhayana Bolyai Brahmagupta Cartan Coxeter Descartes Euclid Euler Gauss Gromov Hilbert Jyeṣṭhadeva Kātyāyana Khayyám Klein Lobachevsky Manava Minkowski Minggatu Pascal Pythagoras Parameshvara Poincaré Riemann Sakabe Sijzi al-Tusi Veblen Virasena Yang Hui al-Yasamin Zhang List of geometers
by period BCE Ahmes Baudhayana Manava Pythagoras Euclid Archimedes Apollonius 1–1400s Zhang Kātyāyana Aryabhata Brahmagupta Virasena Alhazen Sijzi Khayyám al-Yasamin al-Tusi Yang Hui Parameshvara 1400s–1700s Jyeṣṭhadeva Descartes Pascal Minggatu Euler Sakabe Aida 1700s–1900s Gauss Lobachevsky Bolyai Riemann Klein Poincaré Hilbert Minkowski Cartan Veblen Coxeter Present day Atiyah Gromov
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A line is said to be perpendicular to another line if the two lines intersect at a right angle.[2] Explicitly, a first line is perpendicular to a second line if (1) the two lines meet; and (2) at the point of intersection the straight angle on one side of the first line is cut by the second line into two congruent angles. Perpendicularity can be shown to be symmetric, meaning if a first line is perpendicular to a second line, then the second line is also perpendicular to the first. For this reason, we may speak of two lines as being perpendicular (to each other) without specifying an order.

Perpendicularity easily extends to segments and rays. For example, a line segment ${\displaystyle {\overline {AB}}}$ is perpendicular to a line segment ${\displaystyle {\overline {CD}}}$ if, when each is extended in both directions to form an infinite line, these two resulting lines are perpendicular in the sense above. In symbols, ${\displaystyle {\overline {AB}}\perp {\overline {CD}}}$ means line segment AB is perpendicular to line segment CD.[3] For information regarding the perpendicular symbol see Up tack.

A line is said to be perpendicular to a plane if it is perpendicular to every line in the plane that it intersects. This definition depends on the definition of perpendicularity between lines.

Two planes in space are said to be perpendicular if the dihedral angle at which they meet is a right angle (90 degrees).

Perpendicularity is one particular instance of the more general mathematical concept of orthogonality; perpendicularity is the orthogonality of classical geometric objects. Thus, in advanced mathematics, the word "perpendicular" is sometimes used to describe much more complicated geometric orthogonality conditions, such as that between a surface and its normal.