Theorems about curves | Spherical geometry | Spherical curves | Theorems in differential geometry
Tennis ball theorem
In geometry, the tennis ball theorem states that any smooth curve on the surface of a sphere that divides the sphere into two equal-area subsets without touching or crossing itself must have at least four inflection points, points at which the curve does not consistently bend to only one side of its tangent line.The tennis ball theorem was first published under this name by Vladimir Arnold in 1994, and is often attributed to Arnold, but a closely related result appears earlier in a 1968 paper by Beniamino Segre, and the tennis ball theorem itself is a special case of a theorem in a 1977 paper by Joel L. Weiner. The name of the theorem comes from the standard shape of a tennis ball, whose seam forms a curve that meets the conditions of the theorem; the same kind of curve is also used for the seams on baseballs. The tennis ball theorem can be generalized to any curve that is not contained in a closed hemisphere. A centrally symmetric curve on the sphere must have at least six inflection points. The theorem is analogous to the four-vertex theorem according to which any smooth closed plane curve has at least four points of extreme curvature. (Wikipedia).
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