A quartic plane curve is a plane curve of the fourth degree. It can be defined by a quartic equation:
This equation has fifteen constants. However, it can be multiplied by any non-zero constant without changing the curve. Therefore, the space of quartic curves can be identified with the real projective space . It also follows that there is exactly one quartic curve that passes through a set of fourteen distinct points in general position, since a quartic has 14 degrees of freedom.
A quartic curve can have a maximum of:
- Four connected components
- Twenty-eight bi-tangents
- Three ordinary double points.
Read more about Quartic Plane Curve: Examples
Famous quotes containing the words plane and/or curve:
“We’ve got to figure these things a little bit different than most people. Y’know, there’s something about going out in a plane that beats any other way.... A guy that washes out at the controls of his own ship, well, he goes down doing the thing that he loved the best. It seems to me that that’s a very special way to die.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)
“And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)