Name: ____________________ Date: _______________ Period: _________

Whats in a Circle?

Follow the prompts below to discover new properties of circles. Be sure to
write all of your answers clearly and justify every answer.

1. Open up the first applet, the one from Math Open Reference. Play around with
the applet, making sure the Show Coordinates checkbox is checked. Move P
around to observe how the three different values change. Then uncheck the
Freeze radius checkbox and see how the relationship compares.

a. Why did they draw a triangle? What does it reveal about the relationship
between the radius and the values of x and y?
Pythagorean Theorem:

b. What do the values of x and y represent? What does the hypotenuse
represent?
Answers may vary: The coordinates of the point on the circle, x represents
the distance traveled left/right and y is the distance traveled up/down
from the center. The hypotenuse is the
radius of the circle.

c. What would be the x and y values if P was
(2,3)? What would r be?
x = 2, y = 3. Use Pythagorean Theorem for
r:

, so

d. What would x and y be if P was (-4,1)?
What would r be?
x = -4, y = 1. Use Pythagorean Theorem for
r:

, so

e. According to the applet, what is the basic equation for a circle centered at
(0,0)? Use the values of x and y in your equation.
Pythagorean Theorem:

f. Using your equation, find the equation of the circle to the right.
Depending on how students interpret the graph, they may come up with two
different equations:

or

Name: ____________________ Date: _______________ Period: _________
2. Open up the second applet, the one from Math Warehouse. Play around with the applet,
but make sure the Snap to Grid option is checked. This allows the points to be whole
numbers. Move both the center and the point on the circle and observe how the
equations above change.

a. What is the difference between each of the three equations?
One shows the exact answer of the radius squared, one shows the rounded version
of the radius squared, and one shows the computed value of the radius squared.

b. What would happen if we took the square root of both sides? What formula would
we obtain?
The distance formula for the distance between the center and the point on the
circle.

c. What do each of the values x, y, and the numbers in the equations represent?
x is the x-coordinate of the point on the circle, y is the y-coordinate of the point
on the circle, the values to the left of the equal sign are the coordinates of the
center, and the value to the right of the equal sign is the radius squared.

d. Why is this equation different from the basic one we found before?
The center is not the origin.

e. Why does the equation work? Write at least two sentences explaining why.
Answers may vary. The values with the x and y shift the center to a new point other
than the origin. The change in x finds the distance between the x-values of the
center and the point on the circle while the change in y finds the distance between
the y-values of the center and the point on the circle.

f. Write the equation for a circle of any center
point.
Variables may vary.

3. Draw a right triangle on the graph to the right
with vertices A (3,2) and B (5,6) (AB is the
hypotenuse).

a. Find the equation of the circle passing through
B with center A. Then draw the circle.

Name: ____________________ Date: _______________ Period: _________
4. For each circle given below, find its equation.

Name: ____________________ Date: _______________ Period: _________
How Many Triangles?

How many right triangles can be drawn in a circle with a radius r whose hypotenuse
is r? Draw as many of these triangles as you can in the circle below.


What point on each triangle represents a point on the circle?
Answers may vary. The vertex of the triangle where the hypotenuse and the y-leg
meet.

Open up the GSP file. Press the Play button to animate the point. How many
triangles does the animation create?
Infinitely many.

How can we use these triangles to confirm our equation for a circle?
There are an infinite number of values that will satisfy the equation. Therefore,
there are an infinite number of triangles that can be formed.
Name: ____________________ Date: _______________ Period: _________
Equations of Circles in Real Life

1. A teacher is holding a reading night at the streetlight outside of the school.
From the streetlight, she walks 8 feet north and 15 feet east to reach the edge
of the light. She wants to know how to model the outside boundary of the light
to make sure each student has enough light to read. What model can she use
for the boundary of the light?

2. A cell phone network has a tower that transmits signal to a circular area. The
tower is located 36 miles west and 16 miles north of the center of the city. A
family is located exactly 45 miles directly away from the tower.

a. Find the boundary for the transmission of the cell phone tower.

b. Will the family receive signal?
No. The radius of the cell phone signal
for the tower is approximately 39.39
miles. Because the familys distance
from the cell phone tower is greater
than the radius, they would lie outside
the circle and therefore not within
range for the cell phone signal.
Name: ____________________ Date: _______________ Period: _________
From Standard to Vertex Form

Convert the following equations of circles into vertex form. Then, list the
vertex and radius.

1.

vertex: (2,3), radius 2




2.

vertex: (-3,4), radius 5






3.

vertex: (3,-5), radius 4






4.

vertex: (-2,-2), radius 6