# Minimum distance between a point and a geometric locus

aliekor
Hi guys I have a problem to solve, I'd like to find the minimum distance between a point and a geometric locus described in closed form, for example the intersection of two circles:

p= point coordinate
p1= center coordinate circle 1
p2=center coordinate circle 2

|p1|^2-r1^2<0 (region inside circle 1)
|p2|^2-r2^2<0 (region inside circle 2)
how can i find an expression that gave me the minimum distance between p and the intersection of the two circles?

Hey aliekor and welcome to the forums.

Depending on the level of knowledge you have you can do it in different ways. If you know calculus you can form what's called a minimization problem and solve for the first derivatives to be 0 and then obtain the solutions and screen out the ones that aren't required.

Have you taken calculus?

aliekor
no is not possible. I need a closed form for my problem. actually I need to know if p is inside the intersection of the circles, I thought that a minimum distance negative can give me this information.

There is no reason why you can't get a closed form answer.

Also do you have an analytic expression (equality or inequality) for p? You have given constraints for everything else except for what p is mathematically.

aliekor
No I don't. I need just the measure of the distance between a given p and the geometric locus

This sounds like a high school problem but I don't know the definition of a locus (and haven't seen it in more than 10 years): can you give the mathematical definition of a locus from a point p?

aliekor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_(mathematics [Broken])

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