Of the Week

Through three points not in a straight line, one circle and only one can be passed. I got the exact wording of this geometric principle from A Beka Book's Plane Geometry  by F. Eugene Seymour, a book I used in my eleventh grade geometry class. In the text, this principle is found on page 166 as a corollary to Construction 12 (the construction of a circle around a triangle). Something about this corollary intrigued me, and it's one of those random facts I never forgot. " A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle. "   a schoolchild (quoted by Mark Twain)