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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 ancient Greek mathematicians studied conic sections, culminating around 200 BC with Apollonius of Perga 's systematic work on their properties.
A hyperbola has two pieces, called connected components or branches, that are mirror images of each other and resemble two infinite bows. The hyperbola is one of the three kinds of conic section, formed by the intersection of a plane and a double cone. (The other conic sections are the parabola and the ellipse. A circle is a special case of an ...
The latus rectum is defined similarly for the other two conics – the ellipse and the hyperbola. The latus rectum is the line drawn through a focus of a conic section parallel to the directrix and terminated both ways by the curve. For any case, is the radius of the osculating circle at the vertex.
(The parabolas are orthogonal for an analogous reason to confocal ellipses and hyperbolas: parabolas have a reflective property.) Analogous to confocal ellipses and hyperbolas, the plane can be covered by an orthogonal net of parabolas, which can be used for a parabolic coordinate system .
The semi-minor axis of an ellipse runs from the center of the ellipse (a point halfway between and on the line running between the foci) to the edge of the ellipse. The semi-minor axis is half of the minor axis. The minor axis is the longest line segment perpendicular to the major axis that connects two points on the ellipse's edge.
F: focus of the red parabola and vertex of the blue parabola. In geometry, focal conics are a pair of curves consisting of [1] [2] either an ellipse and a hyperbola, where the hyperbola is contained in a plane, which is orthogonal to the plane containing the ellipse. The vertices of the hyperbola are the foci of the ellipse and its foci are the ...
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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 ...