Area of a circle Archimedes is not rigorous by modern standards, because it assumes that we can compare the length of arc of a circle to the length of a secant and a tangent line, and similar statements about the area, as geometrically evident. The area of a regular polygon is half its perimeter times the apothem. As the number of sides of the regular polygon increases, the polygon tends to a circle, and the apothem tends to the radius. This suggests that the area of a disk is half the circumference of its bounding circle times the radius. Following Archimedes' argument in "The
Great-circle distance Great-circle distance The great-circle distance or orthodromic distance is the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a sphere, measured along the surface of the sphere (as opposed to a straight line through the sphere's interior). The distance between two points in Euclidean space is the length of a straight line between them, but on the sphere there are no straight lines. In spaces with curvature, straight lines are replaced by geodesics. Geodesics on the sphere are circles on the sphere whose centers coincide with the center of the sphere, and are called "great circles". The determination of