Tangent to a Circle SAT Video Monday

What does it mean when a line is tangent to a circle? When a line is tangential to a circle, you can draw a straight line from the center of the circle to the line and a right angle between the two lines will result. This can help us with questions in which a triangle is inscribed in a circle; one of the sides will be a line segment tangent to the circle, the second side will be the line extended from the circle and the third side will extend from the center of the circle and meet the line outside of the circle. This will form a triangle (check out video for a picture of such a figure). Remember your 30:60:90 rules and the Pythagorean theorem. This should help you solve most of these question types on the SAT.