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The line perpendicular to the directrix and passing through the focus (that is, the line that splits the parabola through the middle) is called the "axis of symmetry". The point where the parabola intersects its axis of symmetry is called the "vertex" and is the point where the parabola is most sharply curved. The distance between the vertex ...
The solutions of this equation are the x-values of the critical points and are given, using the quadratic formula, by =. The sign of the expression Δ 0 = b 2 – 3ac inside the square root determines the number of critical points. If it is positive, then there are two critical points, one is a local maximum, and the other is a local minimum.
A three-dimensional version of parabolic coordinates is obtained by rotating the two-dimensional system about the symmetry axis of the parabolas. Parabolic coordinates have found many applications, e.g., the treatment of the Stark effect and the potential theory of the edges.
A similar but more complicated method works for cubic equations, which have three resolvents and a quadratic equation (the "resolving polynomial") relating and , which one can solve by the quadratic equation, and similarly for a quartic equation (degree 4), whose resolving polynomial is a cubic, which can in turn be solved. [14]
In this position, the hyperbolic paraboloid opens downward along the x-axis and upward along the y-axis (that is, the parabola in the plane x = 0 opens upward and the parabola in the plane y = 0 opens downward). Any paraboloid (elliptic or hyperbolic) is a translation surface, as it can be generated by a moving parabola directed by a second ...
For linear and quadratic functions, the graph of any function can be obtained from the graph of the parent function by simple translations and stretches parallel to the axes. For example, the graph of y = x 2 − 4 x + 7 can be obtained from the graph of y = x 2 by translating +2 units along the X axis and +3 units along Y axis.
Parametric equations are commonly used in kinematics, where the trajectory of an object is represented by equations depending on time as the parameter. Because of this application, a single parameter is often labeled t ; however, parameters can represent other physical quantities (such as geometric variables) or can be selected arbitrarily for ...
Parabolic cylinder () function appears naturally in the Schrödinger equation for the one-dimensional quantum harmonic oscillator (a quantum particle in the oscillator potential), [+] = (), where is the reduced Planck constant, is the mass of the particle, is the coordinate of the particle, is the frequency of the oscillator, is the energy, and () is the particle's wave-function.