Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A conic is the curve obtained as the intersection of a plane, called the cutting plane, with the surface of a double cone (a cone with two nappes).It is usually assumed that the cone is a right circular cone for the purpose of easy description, but this is not required; any double cone with some circular cross-section will suffice.
Any plane section of an elliptic cone is a conic section. Obviously, any right circular cone contains circles. This is also true, but less obvious, in the general case (see circular section). The intersection of an elliptic cone with a concentric sphere is a spherical conic.
In homogeneous coordinates, each conic section with the equation of a circle has the form + + = It can be proven that a conic section is a circle exactly when it contains (when extended to the complex projective plane) the points I(1: i: 0) and J(1: −i: 0).
As an example, count the conic sections tangent to five given lines in the projective plane. [4] The conics constitute a projective space of dimension 5, taking their six coefficients as homogeneous coordinates, and five points determine a conic, if the points are in general linear position, as passing through a given point imposes a linear ...
This page was last edited on 14 November 2020, at 20:25 (UTC).; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License; additional terms may apply.
A pencil of confocal ellipses and hyperbolas is specified by choice of linear eccentricity c (the x-coordinate of one focus) and can be parametrized by the semi-major axis a (the x-coordinate of the intersection of a specific conic in the pencil and the x-axis). When 0 < a < c the conic is a hyperbola; when c < a the conic is an ellipse.
The directrix of a conic section can be found using Dandelin's construction. Each Dandelin sphere intersects the cone at a circle; let both of these circles define their own planes. The intersections of these two parallel planes with the conic section's plane will be two parallel lines; these lines are the directrices of the conic section.
Another classic problem in enumerative geometry, of similar vintage to conics, is the Problem of Apollonius: a circle that is tangent to three circles in general determines eight circles, as each of these is a quadratic condition and 2 3 = 8. As a question in real geometry, a full analysis involves many special cases, and the actual number of ...