Pick any two coprime 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)
|
Let
be the sum of the radii
 |
(2)
|
then
 |
(3)
|
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)
|
and the circles
and
intersect in
 |
(5)
|
Moreover,
lies on the circumference of the semicircle with diameter
and
lies on the circumference of the semicircle with diameter
(Apostol 1997, p. 101).