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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 called as a
The name "parabola" is due to Apollonius, who discovered many properties of conic sections. It means "application", referring to "application of areas" concept, that has a connection with this curve, as Apollonius had proved. [1] The focus–directrix property of the parabola and other conic sections was mentioned in the works of Pappus.
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 ...
Menaechmus likely discovered the conic sections, that is, the ellipse, the parabola, and the hyperbola, as a by-product of his search for the solution to the Delian problem. [3] Menaechmus knew that in a parabola y 2 = L x, where L is a constant called the latus rectum , although he was not aware of the fact that any equation in two unknowns ...
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 ...
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 ...
If this transformation is performed on each conic in an orthogonal net of confocal ellipses and hyperbolas, the limit is an orthogonal net of confocal parabolas facing opposite directions. Every parabola with focus at the origin and x-axis as its axis of symmetry is the locus of points satisfying the equation
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 ...