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A family of conic sections of varying eccentricity share a focus point and directrix line, including an ellipse (red, e = 1/2), a parabola (green, e = 1), and a hyperbola (blue, e = 2). The conic of eccentricity 0 in this figure is an infinitesimal circle centered at the focus, and the conic of eccentricity ∞ is an infinitesimally separated ...
An ellipse (red) obtained as the intersection of a cone with an inclined plane. Ellipse: notations Ellipses: examples with increasing eccentricity. In mathematics, an ellipse is a plane curve surrounding two focal points, such that for all points on the curve, the sum of the two distances to the focal points is a constant.
Define b by the equations c 2 = a 2 − b 2 for an ellipse and c 2 = a 2 + b 2 for a hyperbola. For a circle, c = 0 so a 2 = b 2, with radius r = a = b. For the parabola, the standard form has the focus on the x-axis at the point (a, 0) and the directrix the line with equation x = −a. In standard form the parabola will always pass through the ...
The free term of a reduced quadratic equation is always the product of its solutions. Hence, if the tangents meet at (x 0, y 0) orthogonally, the following equations hold: = = The last equation is equivalent to =, which is the equation of the directrix.
In the theory of quadratic forms, the parabola is the graph of the quadratic form x 2 (or other scalings), while the elliptic paraboloid is the graph of the positive-definite quadratic form x 2 + y 2 (or scalings), and the hyperbolic paraboloid is the graph of the indefinite quadratic form x 2 − y 2. Generalizations to more variables yield ...
More generally, for any collection of points P i, weights w i, and constant C, one can define a circle as the locus of points X such that (,) =.. The director circle of an ellipse is a special case of this more general construction with two points P 1 and P 2 at the foci of the ellipse, weights w 1 = w 2 = 1, and C equal to the square of the major axis of the ellipse.
*The distance from a point, P, on the ellipse to a focus is always proportional to the distance to a vertical line, D, called the directrix. The constant of proportionality is the eccentricity, e. *The eccentricity is always between 0 and 1. At zero, the ellispe becomes a circle, at 1 the ellipse becomes a parabola. Greater than one, it is a ...
In an ellipse, the semi-major axis is the geometric mean of the distance from the center to either focus and the distance from the center to either directrix. The semi-minor axis of an ellipse runs from the center of the ellipse (a point halfway between and on the line running between the foci) to the edge of the ellipse. The semi-minor axis is ...