what name for a shape made from two intersecting circles of different sizes?

Question

what is the name of a shape made from two circles with different radii that intersect each other?

Sort of like a snowman shape, made of a big and a small ball of snow, melted together a bit! :-) Thanks

Answer 1

I do know that a "figure 8" shape is known as a lemniscate: you can read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemniscate. But I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for. What you seem to describe is the union of two circles (of different size) which intersect at two points.

Wikipedia has an interesting "taxonomy" of various shapes and variations of familiar shapes, etc.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_geometric_shapes