Parallel (geometry)

In geometry, parallel lines are coplanar infinite straight lines that

do not intersect at any point. Parallel planes are planes in the
same three-dimensional space that never meet. Parallel curves are
curves that do not touch each other or intersect and keep a fixed
Line art drawing of parallel lines and
minimum distance. In three-dimensional Euclidean space, a line
curves.
and a plane that do not share a point are also said to be parallel.
However, two noncoplanar lines are called skew lines. Line
segments and Euclidean vectors are parallel if they have the same direction or opposite direction (not
necessarily the same length).[1]

Parallel lines are the subject of Euclid's parallel postulate.[2] Parallelism is primarily a property of affine
geometries and Euclidean geometry is a special instance of this type of geometry. In some other
geometries, such as hyperbolic geometry, lines can have analogous properties that are referred to as
parallelism.

Symbol
The parallel symbol is .[3][4] For example, indicates that line AB is parallel to line CD.

In the Unicode character set, the "parallel" and "not parallel" signs have codepoints U+2225 (∥) and
U+2226 (∦), respectively. In addition, U+22D5 (⋕) represents the relation "equal and parallel to".[5]

Euclidean parallelism

Two lines in a plane

Conditions for parallelism

Given parallel straight lines l and m in Euclidean space, the following properties are equivalent:

1. Every point on line m is located at exactly the same (minimum) distance from line l
(equidistant lines).
2. Line m is in the same plane as line l but does not intersect l (recall that lines extend to
infinity in either direction).
3. When lines m and l are both intersected by a third straight line (a transversal) in the same
plane, the corresponding angles of intersection with the transversal are congruent.
Since these are equivalent properties, any one of them could be taken as the definition of parallel lines in
Euclidean space, but the first and third properties involve measurement, and so, are "more complicated"
than the second. Thus, the second property is the one usually chosen as the defining property of parallel
lines in Euclidean geometry.[6] The other properties
are then consequences of Euclid's Parallel Postulate.

History
The definition of parallel lines as a pair of straight
lines in a plane which do not meet appears as
Definition 23 in Book I of Euclid's Elements.[7]
Alternative definitions were discussed by other
Greeks, often as part of an attempt to prove the
parallel postulate. Proclus attributes a definition of
parallel lines as equidistant lines to Posidonius and
quotes Geminus in a similar vein. Simplicius also
mentions Posidonius' definition as well as its As shown by the tick marks, lines a and b are
modification by the philosopher Aganis.[7] parallel. This can be proved because the
transversal t produces congruent corresponding
At the end of the nineteenth century, in England, angles , shown here both to the right of the
Euclid's Elements was still the standard textbook in transversal, one above and adjacent to line a and
the other above and adjacent to line b.
secondary schools. The traditional treatment of
geometry was being pressured to change by the new
developments in projective geometry and non-Euclidean geometry, so several new textbooks for the
teaching of geometry were written at this time. A major difference between these reform texts, both
between themselves and between them and Euclid, is the treatment of parallel lines.[8] These reform texts
were not without their critics and one of them, Charles Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll), wrote a play,
Euclid and His Modern Rivals, in which these texts are lambasted.[9]

One of the early reform textbooks was James Maurice Wilson's Elementary Geometry of 1868.[10] Wilson
based his definition of parallel lines on the primitive notion of direction. According to Wilhelm Killing[11]
the idea may be traced back to Leibniz.[12] Wilson, without defining direction since it is a primitive, uses
the term in other definitions such as his sixth definition, "Two straight lines that meet one another have
different directions, and the difference of their directions is the angle between them." Wilson (1868, p. 2)
In definition 15 he introduces parallel lines in this way; "Straight lines which have the same direction, but
are not parts of the same straight line, are called parallel lines." Wilson (1868, p. 12) Augustus De
Morgan reviewed this text and declared it a failure, primarily on the basis of this definition and the way
Wilson used it to prove things about parallel lines. Dodgson also devotes a large section of his play (Act
II, Scene VI § 1) to denouncing Wilson's treatment of parallels. Wilson edited this concept out of the third
and higher editions of his text.[13]

Other properties, proposed by other reformers, used as replacements for the definition of parallel lines,
did not fare much better. The main difficulty, as pointed out by Dodgson, was that to use them in this way
required additional axioms to be added to the system. The equidistant line definition of Posidonius,
expounded by Francis Cuthbertson in his 1874 text Euclidean Geometry suffers from the problem that the
points that are found at a fixed given distance on one side of a straight line must be shown to form a
straight line. This can not be proved and must be assumed to be true.[14] The corresponding angles
formed by a transversal property, used by W. D. Cooley in his 1860 text, The Elements of Geometry,
simplified and explained requires a proof of the fact that if one transversal meets a pair of lines in
congruent corresponding angles then all transversals must do so. Again, a new axiom is needed to justify
this statement.

Construction
The three properties above lead to three different methods of construction[15] of parallel lines.

The problem: Draw a line through a

parallel to l.

Property 1: Line m has Property 2: Take a random line

everywhere the same distance to through a that intersects l in x.
line l. Move point x to infinity.

Property 3: Both l and m share a

transversal line through a that
intersect them at 90°.

Distance between two parallel lines

Because parallel lines in a Euclidean plane are equidistant there is a unique distance between the two
parallel lines. Given the equations of two non-vertical, non-horizontal parallel lines,
the distance between the two lines can be found by locating two points (one on each line) that lie on a
common perpendicular to the parallel lines and calculating the distance between them. Since the lines
have slope m, a common perpendicular would have slope −1/m and we can take the line with equation y =
−x/m as a common perpendicular. Solve the linear systems

and

to get the coordinates of the points. The solutions to the linear systems are the points

and

These formulas still give the correct point coordinates even if the parallel lines are horizontal (i.e., m = 0).
The distance between the points is

which reduces to

When the lines are given by the general form of the equation of a line (horizontal and vertical lines are
included):

their distance can be expressed as

Two lines in three-dimensional space

Two lines in the same three-dimensional space that do not intersect need not be parallel. Only if they are
in a common plane are they called parallel; otherwise they are called skew lines.
Two distinct lines l and m in three-dimensional space are parallel if and only if the distance from a point
P on line m to the nearest point on line l is independent of the location of P on line m. This never holds
for skew lines.

A line and a plane

A line m and a plane q in three-dimensional space, the line not lying in that plane, are parallel if and only
if they do not intersect.

Equivalently, they are parallel if and only if the distance from a point P on line m to the nearest point in
plane q is independent of the location of P on line m.

Two planes
Similar to the fact that parallel lines must be located in the same plane, parallel planes must be situated in
the same three-dimensional space and contain no point in common.

Two distinct planes q and r are parallel if and only if the distance from a point P in plane q to the nearest
point in plane r is independent of the location of P in plane q. This will never hold if the two planes are
not in the same three-dimensional space.

In non-Euclidean geometry
In non-Euclidean geometry, the concept of a straight line is replaced by the more general concept of a
geodesic, a curve which is locally straight with respect to the metric (definition of distance) on a
Riemannian manifold, a surface (or higher-dimensional space) which may itself be curved. In general
relativity, particles not under the influence of external forces follow geodesics in spacetime, a four-
dimensional manifold with 3 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension.[16]

In non-Euclidean geometry (elliptic or hyperbolic geometry) the three Euclidean properties mentioned
above are not equivalent and only the second one (Line m is in the same plane as line l but does not
intersect l) is useful in non-Euclidean geometries, since it involves no measurements. In general geometry
the three properties above give three different types of curves, equidistant curves, parallel geodesics
and geodesics sharing a common perpendicular, respectively.

Hyperbolic geometry
While in Euclidean geometry two geodesics can either intersect or be parallel, in hyperbolic geometry,
there are three possibilities. Two geodesics belonging to the same plane can either be:

1. intersecting, if they intersect in a common point in the plane,

2. parallel, if they do not intersect in the plane, but converge to a common limit point at infinity
(ideal point), or
3. ultra parallel, if they do not have a common limit point at infinity.[17]
In the literature ultra parallel geodesics are often called non-intersecting. Geodesics intersecting at
infinity are called limiting parallel.
As in the illustration through a point a not on line l
there are two limiting parallel lines, one for each
direction ideal point of line l. They separate the lines
intersecting line l and those that are ultra parallel to
line l.

Ultra parallel lines have single common perpendicular

(ultraparallel theorem), and diverge on both sides of
this common perpendicular. Intersecting, parallel and ultra parallel lines
through a with respect to l in the hyperbolic plane.
The parallel lines appear to intersect l just off the
image. This is just an artifact of the visualisation.
On a real hyperbolic plane the lines will get closer
Spherical or elliptic geometry to each other and 'meet' in infinity.
In spherical geometry, all geodesics are great circles.
Great circles divide the sphere in two equal
hemispheres and all great circles intersect each other.
Thus, there are no parallel geodesics to a given
geodesic, as all geodesics intersect. Equidistant curves
on the sphere are called parallels of latitude
analogous to the latitude lines on a globe. Parallels of
latitude can be generated by the intersection of the
sphere with a plane parallel to a plane through the
center of the sphere.

On the sphere there is no such thing as a parallel

line. Line a is a great circle, the equivalent of a
straight line in spherical geometry. Line c is
equidistant to line a but is not a great circle. It is a
parallel of latitude. Line b is another geodesic
which intersects a in two antipodal points. They
share two common perpendiculars (one shown in
blue).

Reflexive variant
If l, m, n are three distinct lines, then

In this case, parallelism is a transitive relation. However, in case l = n, the superimposed lines are not
considered parallel in Euclidean geometry. The binary relation between parallel lines is evidently a
symmetric relation. According to Euclid's tenets, parallelism is not a reflexive relation and thus fails to be
an equivalence relation. Nevertheless, in affine geometry a pencil of parallel lines is taken as an
equivalence class in the set of lines where parallelism is an equivalence relation.[18][19][20]

To this end, Emil Artin (1957) adopted a definition of parallelism where two lines are parallel if they have
all or none of their points in common.[21] Then a line is parallel to itself so that the reflexive and
transitive properties belong to this type of parallelism, creating an equivalence relation on the set of lines.
In the study of incidence geometry, this variant of parallelism is used in the affine plane.

See also
Clifford parallel
Collinearity
Concurrent lines
Limiting parallel
Parallel curve
Ultraparallel theorem

Notes
1. Harris, John W.; Stöcker, Horst (1998). Handbook of mathematics and computational
science (https://books.google.com/books?id=DnKLkOb_YfIC&pg=PA332). Birkhäuser.
Chapter 6, p. 332. ISBN 0-387-94746-9.
2. Although this postulate only refers to when lines meet, it is needed to prove the uniqueness
of parallel lines in the sense of Playfair's axiom.
3. Kersey (the elder), John (1673). Algebra. Vol. Book IV. London. p. 177.
4. Cajori, Florian (1993) [September 1928]. "§ 184, § 359, § 368" (https://archive.org/details/his
toryofmathema00cajo_0/page/193). A History of Mathematical Notations - Notations in
Elementary Mathematics. Vol. 1 (two volumes in one unaltered reprint ed.). Chicago, US:
Open court publishing company. pp. 193, 402–403, 411–412 (https://archive.org/details/hist
oryofmathema00cajo_0/page/193). ISBN 0-486-67766-4. LCCN 93-29211 (https://lccn.loc.g
ov/93-29211). Retrieved 2019-07-22. "§359. […] ∥ for parallel occurs in Oughtred's
Opuscula mathematica hactenus inedita (1677) [p. 197], a posthumous work (§ 184) […]
§368. Signs for parallel lines. […] when Recorde's sign of equality won its way upon the
Continent, vertical lines came to be used for parallelism. We find ∥ for "parallel" in Kersey,
[14] Caswell, Jones,[15] Wilson,[16] Emerson,[17] Kambly,[18] and the writers of the last fifty
years who have been already quoted in connection with other pictographs. Before about
1875 it does not occur as often […] Hall and Stevens[1] use "par[1] or ∥" for parallel […] [14]
John Kersey, Algebra (London, 1673), Book IV, p. 177. [15] W. Jones, Synopsis palmarioum
matheseos (London, 1706). [16] John Wilson, Trigonometry (Edinburgh, 1714), characters
explained. [17] W. Emerson, Elements of Geometry (London, 1763), p. 4. [18] L. Kambly,
Die Elementar-Mathematik, Part 2: Planimetrie, 43. edition (Breslau, 1876), p. 8. […] [1] H.
S. Hall and F. H. Stevens, Euclid's Elements, Parts I and II (London, 1889), p. 10. […]" [1] (h
ttps://monoskop.org/images/2/21/Cajori_Florian_A_History_of_Mathematical_Notations_2_
Vols.pdf)
5. "Mathematical Operators – Unicode Consortium" (https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U220
0.pdf) (PDF). Retrieved 2013-04-21.
6. Wylie 1964, pp. 92—94
7. Heath 1956, pp. 190–194
 8. Richards 1988, Chap. 4: Euclid and the English Schoolchild. pp. 161–200
9. Carroll, Lewis (2009) [1879], Euclid and His Modern Rivals, Barnes & Noble, ISBN 978-1-
4351-2348-9
10. Wilson 1868
11. Einführung in die Grundlagen der Geometrie, I, p. 5
12. Heath 1956, p. 194
13. Richards 1988, pp. 180–184
14. Heath 1956, p. 194
15. Only the third is a straightedge and compass construction, the first two are infinitary
processes (they require an "infinite number of steps".)
16. Church, Benjamin (2022-12-03). "A Not So Gentle Introduction to General Relativity" (http
s://web.stanford.edu/~bvchurch/assets/files/talks/GR.pdf) (PDF).
17. "5.3: Theorems of Hyperbolic Geometry" (https://math.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Geometry/
An_IBL_Introduction_to_Geometries_(Mark_Fitch)/05:_Hyperbolic_Geometry/5.03:_New_P
age). Mathematics LibreTexts. 2021-10-30. Retrieved 2024-08-22.
18. H. S. M. Coxeter (1961) Introduction to Geometry, p 192, John Wiley & Sons
19. Wanda Szmielew (1983) From Affine to Euclidean Geometry, p 17, D. Reidel ISBN 90-277-
1243-3
20. Andy Liu (2011) "Is parallelism an equivalence relation?", The College Mathematics Journal
42(5):372
21. Emil Artin (1957) Geometric Algebra, page 52 (https://archive.org/details/geometricalgebra0
33556mbp/page/n63/mode/2up?view=theater) via Internet Archive

References
Heath, Thomas L. (1956), The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements (2nd ed. [Facsimile.
Original publication: Cambridge University Press, 1925] ed.), New York: Dover Publications

(3 vols.): ISBN 0-486-60088-2 (vol. 1), ISBN 0-486-60089-0 (vol. 2), ISBN 0-486-60090-4
(vol. 3). Heath's authoritative translation plus extensive historical research and detailed
commentary throughout the text.

Richards, Joan L. (1988), Mathematical Visions: The Pursuit of Geometry in Victorian

England, Boston: Academic Press, ISBN 0-12-587445-6
Wilson, James Maurice (1868), Elementary Geometry (1st ed.), London: Macmillan and Co.
Wylie, C. R. Jr. (1964), Foundations of Geometry, McGraw–Hill

Further reading
Papadopoulos, Athanase; Théret, Guillaume (2014), La théorie des parallèles de Johann
Heinrich Lambert : Présentation, traduction et commentaires, Paris: Collection Sciences
dans l'histoire, Librairie Albert Blanchard, ISBN 978-2-85367-266-5

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