An equichordal point is a point for which all the chords of a curve
passing through
are of the same length. In other words,
is an equichordal point if, for every chord
of length
of the curve
,
satisfies
(1)
|
A function
satisfying
(2)
|
corresponds to a curve with equichordal point (0, 0) and chord length defined by letting
be the polar equation
of the half-curve for
and then superimposing the polar equation
over the same range. The curves illustrated above correspond to polar equations of the form
(3)
|
for various values of .
Although it long remained an outstanding problem (the equichordal point problem), it is now known that a planar convex region can not have two equichordal points (Rychlik 1997).