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A conic section, conic or a quadratic curve is a curve obtained from a cone's surface intersecting a plane. The three types of conic section are the hyperbola , the parabola , and the ellipse ; the circle is a special case of the ellipse, though it was sometimes considered a fourth type.
The standard form of the equation of a central conic section is obtained when the conic section is translated and rotated so that its center lies at the center of the coordinate system and its axes coincide with the coordinate axes. This is equivalent to saying that the coordinate system's center is moved and the coordinate axes are rotated to ...
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 ...
requiring a conic to pass through a point imposes a linear condition on the coordinates: for a fixed (,), the equation + + + + + = is a linear equation in (,,,,,); by dimension counting , five constraints (that the curve passes through five points) are necessary to specify a conic, as each constraint cuts the dimension of possibilities by 1 ...
The equation for a conic section with apex at the origin and tangent to the y axis is + (+) = alternately = + (+) where R is the radius of curvature at x = 0. This formulation is used in geometric optics to specify oblate elliptical ( K > 0 ), spherical ( K = 0 ), prolate elliptical ( 0 > K > −1 ), parabolic ( K = −1 ), and hyperbolic ( K ...
The axis of a cone is the straight line passing through the apex about which the cone has a circular symmetry. In common usage in elementary geometry, cones are assumed to be right circular, i.e., with a circle base perpendicular to the axis. [1] If the cone is right circular the intersection of a plane with the lateral surface is a conic section.
More generally, when the directrix is an ellipse, or any conic section, and the apex is an arbitrary point not on the plane of , one obtains an elliptic cone [4] (also called a conical quadric or quadratic cone), [5] which is a special case of a quadric surface. [4] [5]
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.