A tangent of a circle is a secant of the circle true or false?

Answer 1

A tangent of a circle is not a secant of a circle, so the answer is false. A tangent of a circle is a line that intersects the curve of the circle at exactly one point on the curve. It could be said to "touch" the circle at one unique location. Obviously there are an infinite number of lines that can be drawn to do this. A secant of a circle is a line that touches the curve of the circle at exactly two unique points on the curve. It might be considered "similar" to the chord of a circle, which is a line segment with endpoints at two unique locations on the curve of a circle. Except that the secant of a circle is a line and not a line segment. Any chord of a circle that is overlaid with a line, which is like saying that we "extend" the line segment that is the chord of the circle on each end, and do so all the way to infinity, we'll have the secant of a circle. Let's take things one step further. If a circle and a line are coplanar (lie in the same plane), one of three things will be true. Either they will have no (zero) points of intersection, or they'll have one point of intersection, or they'll have two points of intersection. There are no other possibilities. Think this through and it will make complete sense. A lot of geometry will "work like this" when we study it and think it through. Use the links below to check out the idea of a tangent and a secant of a circle.