Area of a circle Measurement of a Circle" (c. 260 BCE), compare the area enclosed by a circle to a right triangle whose base has the length of the circle's circumference and whose height equals the circle's radius. If the area of the circle is not equal to that of the triangle, then it must be either greater or less. We eliminate each of these by contradiction, leaving equality as the only possibility. We use regular polygons in the same way. Suppose that the area "C" enclosed by the circle is greater than the area "T" = ⁄"cr" of the triangle. Let "E" denote
Director circle ellipse. The Apollonius circle, the locus of points "X" such that the ratio of distances of "X" to two foci "P" and "P" is a fixed constant "r", is another special case, with "w" = 1, "w" = −"r", and "C" = 0. In the case of a parabola the director circle degenerates to a straight line, the directrix of the parabola. Director circle In geometry, the director circle of an ellipse or hyperbola (also called the orthoptic circle or Fermat–Apollonius circle) is a circle consisting of all points where two perpendicular tangent lines to the ellipse or hyperbola cross