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Menaechmus (Greek: Μέναιχμος, c. 380 – c. 320 BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician, geometer and philosopher [1] born in Alopeconnesus or Prokonnesos in the Thracian Chersonese, who was known for his friendship with the renowned philosopher Plato and for his apparent discovery of conic sections and his solution to the then-long-standing problem of doubling the cube using the ...
In mathematics, the matrix representation of conic sections permits the tools of linear algebra to be used in the study of conic sections.It provides easy ways to calculate a conic section's axis, vertices, tangents and the pole and polar relationship between points and lines of the plane determined by the conic.
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.
In mathematics, the eccentricity of a conic section is a non-negative real number that uniquely characterizes its shape. One can think of the eccentricity as a measure of how much a conic section deviates from being circular. In particular: The eccentricity of a circle is 0. The eccentricity of an ellipse which is not a circle is between 0 and 1.
In mathematics, a spherical conic or sphero-conic is a curve on the sphere, the intersection of the sphere with a concentric elliptic cone. It is the spherical analog of a conic section ( ellipse , parabola , or hyperbola ) in the plane, and as in the planar case, a spherical conic can be defined as the locus of points the sum or difference of ...
From the fact, that the affine image of a conic section is a conic section of the same type (ellipse, parabola,...), one gets: 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).
If two tangent lines can be drawn from a pole to the conic section, then its polar passes through both tangent points. If a point lies on the conic section, its polar is the tangent through this point to the conic section. If a point P lies on its own polar line, then P is on the conic section.
The Ancient Tradition of Geometric Problems studies the three classical problems of circle-squaring, cube-doubling, and angle trisection throughout the history of Greek mathematics, [1] [2] also considering several other problems studied by the Greeks in which a geometric object with certain properties is to be constructed, in many cases through transformations to other construction problems. [2]