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Hyperbolic Geometry

Hyperbolic geometry rejects the parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry. In hyperbolic geometry, given a line and a point not on the line, there are at least two distinct lines through the point that do not intersect the original line. There are two classes of parallel lines in hyperbolic geometry: hyperparallel lines, of which there are exactly two; and ultraparallel lines, of which there are infinitely many. The angle between hyperparallel lines approaches zero as the distance increases without bound, while the angle between ultraparallel lines does not approach zero.

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118 views

Hyperbolic Geometry

Hyperbolic geometry rejects the parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry. In hyperbolic geometry, given a line and a point not on the line, there are at least two distinct lines through the point that do not intersect the original line. There are two classes of parallel lines in hyperbolic geometry: hyperparallel lines, of which there are exactly two; and ultraparallel lines, of which there are infinitely many. The angle between hyperparallel lines approaches zero as the distance increases without bound, while the angle between ultraparallel lines does not approach zero.

Uploaded by

Regina Mueller
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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HYPERBOLIC GEOMETRY

In mathematics, Hyperbolic geometry is a non-Euclidean geometry, meaning that the


parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry is rejected. The parallel postulate in Euclidean
geometry states (for two dimensions) that given a line l and a point P not on l, there is
exactly one line through P that does not intersect l. In hyperbolic geometry, this postulate
is false because there are at least two distinct lines through P which do not intersect l.
Upon assuming this, we can prove an interesting property of hyperbolic geometry: that
there are two classes of non-intersecting lines. Let B be the point on l such that the line
PB is perpendicular to l. Consider the line x through P such that x does not intersect l, and
the angle theta between PB and x (counterclockwise from PB) is as small as possible (i.e.,
any smaller an angle will force the line to intersect l). This is called a hyperparallel line
(or simply parallel line) in hyperbolic geometry. Similarly, the line y that forms the same
angle theta between PB and itself but clockwise from PB will also be hyper-parallel, but
there can be no others. All other lines through P not intersecting l form angles greater
than theta with PB, and are called ultraparallel (or disjointly parallel) lines. Notice that
since there are an infinite number of possible angles between theta and 90 degrees, and
each one will determine two lines through P and disjointly parallel to l, we have an
infinite number of ultraparallel lines.
Thus we have this modified form of the parallel postulate: In Hyperbolic Geometry, given
any line l, and point P not on l, there are exactly two lines through P which are
hyperparallel to l, and infinitely many lines through P ultraparallel to l.
The differences between these types of lines can also be looked at in the following way:
the distance between hyper parallel lines goes to 0 as you move on to infinity. However,
the distance between ultraparallel lines does not go to 0 as you move to infinity.
The angle of parallelism in Euclidean geometry is a constant, that is, any length BP will
yield an angle of parallelism equal to 90. In hyperbolic geometry, the angle of
parallelism varies with what is called the (p) function. This function, described by
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky produced a unique angle of parallelism for each given
length BP. As the length BP gets shorter, the angle of parallelism will approach 90. As
the length BP increases without bound, the angle of parallelism will approach 0. Notice
that due to this fact, as distances get smaller, the hyperbolic plane behaves more and more
like Euclidean geometry. So on the small scale, an observer within the hyperbolic plane
would have a hard time determining they are not in a Euclidean plane.

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