Twin circlesIn geometry, the twin circles are two special circles associated with an arbelos. An arbelos is determined by three collinear points A, B, and C, and is the curvilinear triangular region between the three semicircles that have AB, BC, and AC as their diameters. If the arbelos is partitioned into two smaller regions by a line segment through the middle point of A, B, and C, perpendicular to line ABC, then each of the two twin circles lies within one of these two regions, tangent to its two semicircular sides and to the splitting segment.
Archimedean circleIn geometry, an Archimedean circle is any circle constructed from an arbelos that has the same radius as each of Archimedes' twin circles. If the arbelos is normed such that the diameter of its outer (largest) half circle has a length of 1 and r denotes the radiius of any of the inner half circles, then the radius ρ of such an Archimedean circle is given by There are over fifty different known ways to construct Archimedean circles. An Archimedean circle was first constructed by Archimedes in his Book of Lemmas.
Schoch lineIn geometry, the Schoch line is a line defined from an arbelos and named by Peter Woo after Thomas Schoch, who had studied it in conjunction with the Schoch circles. An arbelos is a shape bounded by three mutually-tangent semicircular arcs with collinear endpoints, with the two smaller arcs nested inside the larger one; let the endpoints of these three arcs be (in order along the line containing them) A, B, and C. Let K1 and K2 be two more arcs, centered at A and C, respectively, with radii AB and CB, so that these two arcs are tangent at B; let K3 be the largest of the three arcs of the arbelos.
Woo circlesIn geometry, the Woo circles, introduced by Peter Y. Woo, are a set of infinitely many Archimedean circles. Form an arbelos with the two inner semicircles tangent at point C. Let m denote any nonnegative real number. Draw two circles, with radii m times the radii of the smaller two arbelos semicircles, centered on the arbelos ground line, also tangent to each other at point C and with radius m times the radius of the corresponding small arbelos arc. Any circle centered on the Schoch line and externally tangent to the circles is a Woo circle.
Schoch circlesIn geometry, the Schoch circles are twelve Archimedean circles constructed by Thomas Schoch. In 1979, Thomas Schoch discovered a dozen new Archimedean circles; he sent his discoveries to Scientific American's "Mathematical Games" editor Martin Gardner. The manuscript was forwarded to Leon Bankoff. Bankoff gave a copy of the manuscript to Professor Clayton Dodge of the University of Maine in 1996. The two were planning to write an article about the Arbelos, in which the Schoch circles would be included; however, Bankoff died the year after.
