Problem:
In the plane, what is the length of the shortest path from to that avoids the interior of the unit circle (i.e., circle of radius ) centered at the origin?
Problem:
In the plane, what is the length of the shortest path from to that avoids the interior of the unit circle (i.e., circle of radius ) centered at the origin?
Solution:
The path goes in a line segment tangent to the circle, then an arc of the circle, then another line segment tangent to the circle. Since one of these tangent lines and a radius of the circle give two legs of a right triangle with hypotenuse the line from to or , the length of each tangent line is . Also, because these are right triangles, the angle of the arc is and has length .