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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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
From this equation one gets the following properties of the evolute: At points with ′ = the evolute is not regular. That means: at points with maximal or minimal curvature (vertices of the given curve) the evolute has cusps. (See the diagrams of the evolutes of the parabola, the ellipse, the cycloid and the nephroid.)
An alternative approach that uses the matrix form of the quadratic equation is based on the fact that when the center is the origin of the coordinate system, there are no linear terms in the equation. Any translation to a coordinate origin (x 0, y 0), using x* = x – x 0, y* = y − y 0 gives rise to
If a tangent contains the point (x 0, y 0), off the parabola, then the equation = + = holds, which has two solutions m 1 and m 2 corresponding to the two tangents passing (x 0, y 0). The free term of a reduced quadratic equation is always the product of its solutions.
For example, the equations = = form a parametric representation of the unit circle, where t is the parameter: A point (x, y) is on the unit circle if and only if there is a value of t such that these two equations generate that point.
Roots and y-intercept in red; Vertex and axis of symmetry in blue; Focus and directrix in pink; Visualisation of the complex roots of y = ax 2 + bx + c: the parabola is rotated 180° about its vertex (orange). Its x-intercepts are rotated 90° around their mid-point, and the Cartesian plane is interpreted as the complex plane (green). [3