Pick any two relatively prime integers and , then the circle of radius centered at is known as a Ford circle. No matter what and how many s and s are picked, none of the Ford circles intersect (and all are tangent to the x-axis). This can be seen by examining the squared distance between the centers of the circles with and ,
(1)
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Let be the sum of the radii
(2)
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then
(3)
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But , so and the distance between circle centers is the sum of the circle radii, with equality (and therefore tangency) iff . Ford circles are related to the Farey sequence (Conway and Guy 1996).
If , , and are three consecutive terms in a Farey sequence, then the circles and are tangent at
(4)
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and the circles and intersect in
(5)
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Moreover, lies on the circumference of the semicircle with diameter and lies on the circumference of the semicircle with diameter (Apostol 1997, p. 101).