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A cone can be generated by moving a line (the generatrix) fixed at the future apex of the cone along a closed curve (the directrix); if that directrix is a circle perpendicular to the line connecting its center to the apex, the motion is rotation around a fixed axis and the resulting shape is a circular cone.
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 ...
The directrix is often taken as a plane curve, in a plane not containing the apex, but this is not a requirement. [1] In general, a conical surface consists of two congruent unbounded halves joined by the apex. Each half is called a nappe, and is the union of all the rays that start at the apex and pass through a point of some fixed space curve ...
(1) All rulings are parallel to a plane, the directrix plane. (2) All rulings intersect a fixed line, the axis. The conoid is a right conoid if its axis is perpendicular to its directrix plane. Hence all rulings are perpendicular to the axis. Because of (1) any conoid is a Catalan surface and can be represented parametrically by
A circle of finite radius has an infinitely distant directrix, while a pair of lines of finite separation have an infinitely distant focus. In mathematics, the eccentricity of a conic section is a non-negative real number that uniquely characterizes its shape.
In an ellipse, the semi-major axis is the geometric mean of the distance from the center to either focus and the distance from the center to either directrix. 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 ...
The circle is the shape with the largest area for a given length of perimeter (see Isoperimetric inequality). The circle is a highly symmetric shape: every line through the centre forms a line of reflection symmetry, and it has rotational symmetry around the centre for every angle. Its symmetry group is the orthogonal group O(2,R).
The ellipse thus generated has its second focus at the center of the directrix circle, and the ellipse lies entirely within the circle. For the parabola, the center of the directrix moves to the point at infinity (see Projective geometry). The directrix "circle" becomes a curve with zero curvature, indistinguishable from a straight line.