Conic section

In mathematics, a conic section (or simply conic) is a curve obtained as

the intersection of the surface of a cone with 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, and is of sufficient interest in its own right that
it was sometimes called a fourth type of conic section. The conic sections
have been studied by the ancient Greek mathematicians with this work
culminating around 200 BC, when Apollonius of Perga undertook a
systematic study of their properties.

The conic sections of the Euclidean plane have various distinguishing

properties. Many of these have been used as the basis for a definition of
Types of conic sections:
the conic sections. One such property defines a non-circular conic[1] to be
1. Parabola
the set of those points whose distances to some particular point, called a 2. Circle and ellipse
focus, and some particular line, called a directrix, are in a fixed ratio, 3. Hyperbola
called the eccentricity. The type of conic is determined by the value of the
eccentricity. In analytic geometry, a conic may be defined as a plane
algebraic curve of degree 2; that is, as the set of points whose coordinates satisfy a
quadratic equation in two variables. This equation may be written in matrix form,
and some geometric properties can be studied as algebraic conditions.

In the Euclidean plane, the conic sections appear to be quite different from one
another, but share many properties. By extending the geometry to a projective
plane (adding a line at infinity) this apparent difference vanishes, and the
commonality becomes evident. Further extension, by expanding the real
coordinates to admit complex coordinates, provides the means to see this
unification algebraically.

Euclidean geometry
The conic sections have been studied for thousands of years and have provided a
rich source of interesting and beautiful results in Euclidean geometry.

Definition
A conic is the curve obtained as the intersection of a plane, called the cutting Table of conics, Cyclopaedia, 1728
plane, with the surface of a double cone (a cone with two nappes). It shall be
assumed that the cone is a right circular cone for the purpose of easy description,
but this is not required; any double cone with some circular cross-section will suffice. Planes that pass through the vertex of the
cone will intersect the cone in a point, a line or a pair of intersecting lines. These are called degenerate conics and some authors
do not consider them to be conics at all. Unless otherwise stated, "conic" in this article will refer to a non-degenerate conic.

There are three types of conics, the ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola. The circle is a special kind of ellipse, although historically it
had been considered as a fourth type (as it was by Apollonius). The circle and the ellipse arise when the intersection of the cone and
plane is a closed curve. The circle is obtained when the cutting plane is parallel to the plane of the generating circle of the cone – for
a right cone, see diagram, this means that the cutting plane is perpendicular to the symmetry axis of the cone. If the cutting plane is
parallel to exactly one generating line of the cone, then the conic is unbounded and is called a parabola. In the remaining case, the
figure is a hyperbola. In this case, the plane will intersect both halves of the cone, producing two separate unbounded curves.
Eccentricity, focus and directrix
A property that the conic sections share is often presented as the following
definition. A conic section is the locus of all points P whose distance to a
fixed point F (called the focus of the conic) is a constant multiple (called
the eccentricity, e) of the distance from P to a fixed line L (called the
directrix of the conic). For 0 < e < 1 we obtain an ellipse, for e = 1 a
parabola, and for e > 1 a hyperbola.

A circle is a limiting case and is not defined by a focus and directrix, in the
plane (however, see the section on the extension to projective planes). The
eccentricity of a circle is defined to be zero and its focus is the center of the
circle, but there is no line in the Euclidean plane that is its directrix.[2]

An ellipse and a hyperbola each have two foci and distinct directrices for
each of them. The line joining the foci is called the principal axis and the
points of intersection of the conic with the principal axis are called the The black boundaries of the colored regions are
vertices of the conic. The line segment joining the vertices of a conic is conic sections. Not shown is the other half of the
called the major axis, also called transverse axis in the hyperbola. The hyperbola, which is on the unshown other half of
midpoint of this line segment is called the center of the conic.[3] Let a the double cone.
denote the distance from the center to a vertex of an ellipse or hyperbola.
a
The distance from the center to a directrix is while the distance from the
e
center to a focus is ae.[4]

A parabola does not have a center.

The eccentricity of an ellipse can be seen as a measure of how far the ellipse
deviates from being circular.

If the angle between the surface of the cone and its axis is and the angle
between the cutting plane and the axis is the eccentricity is[5]

A proof that the conic sections given by the focus-directrix property are the
same as those given by planes intersecting a cone is facilitated by the use of
Dandelin spheres.[6]

Circle (e=0), ellipse (e=1/2), parabola (e=1)

Conic parameters and hyperbola (e=2) with fixed focus F and
Various parameters are associated with a conic section. Recall that the directrix (e=∞).
principal axis is the line joining the foci of an ellipse or hyperbola, and the
center in these cases is the midpoint of the line segment
joining the foci. Some of the other common features
and/or parameters of conics are given below.

The linear eccentricity (c) is the distance between the

center and the focus (or one of the two foci).

The latus rectum is the chord parallel to the directrix

and passing through the focus (or one of the two foci). Its
length is denoted by 2ℓ.

The semi-latus rectum ( ℓ ) is half of the length of the

latus rectum.
Conic parameters in the case of an ellipse
The focal parameter (p) is the distance from the focus
(or one of the two foci) to the directrix.
When an ellipse or hyperbola are in standard position (the principle axis is the x-axis and the center is the origin) the vertices of the
conic have coordinates (−a, 0) and (a, 0), with a non-negative.

The semi-major axis is the value a.

The semi-minor axis is the value b in the standard Cartesian equation of the ellipse or hyperbola.

The following relations hold:

These parameters are related as shown in the following table, where the standard position is assumed. In all cases, a and b are
positive.

conic section equation eccentricity (e) linear eccentricity (c) semi-latus rectum (ℓ) focal parameter (p)

circle

ellipse

parabola N/A

hyperbola

Standard forms in Cartesian coordinates

After introducing Cartesian coordinates
the focus-directrix property can be used
to produce equations that the
coordinates of the points of the conic
section must satisfy.[7] By means of a
change of coordinates (a rotation of axes
and a translation of axes) these equations
can be put into standard forms.[8] For
ellipses and (general) hyperbolas a
standard form would have the x-axis as
Standard forms of an ellipse
the principal axis and the origin (the
Standard forms of a parabola
point (0,0)) as the center. The vertices
would have coordinates (±a, 0) and foci
coordinates (±c, 0). Define b by the equations c2 = a2 − b2 for an ellipse and
c2 = a2 + b2 for a hyperbola. For a circle, c = 0 so a2 = b2. 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 origin. A special case of the hyperbola occurs when
its asymptotes are perpendicular. This special case is called a rectangular or
equilateral hyperbola. In this case, the standard form is obtained by taking
the asymptotes as the coordinate axes and the line x = y as the principal axis.
The foci would have coordinates (c, c) and (−c, −c).[9]

Standard forms of a hyperbola

Circle: x2 + y2 = a2
x2 y2
Ellipse: a2 + b2 = 1

Parabola: y2 = 4ax with a > 0

x2 y2
Hyperbola: a2 − b2 = 1
 c2
Rectangular hyperbola:[10] xy = 2

The first four of these forms are symmetric about both the x-axis and y-axis (for the circle, ellipse and hyperbola), or about the x-
axis only (for the parabola). The rectangular hyperbola, however, is instead symmetric about the lines y = x and y = −x.

These standard forms can be written parametrically as,

Circle: (a cos θ, a sin θ),

Ellipse: (a cos θ, b sin θ),
Parabola: (at2, 2at),
Hyperbola: (a sec θ, b tan θ) or (±a cosh u, b sinh u),

Rectangular hyperbola: where

General Cartesian form

In the Cartesian coordinate system, the graph of a quadratic equation in two variables is always a conic section (though it may be
degenerate[11]), and all conic sections arise in this way. The most general equation is of the form[12]

with all coefficients real numbers and A, B, C not all zero.

Matrix notation
The above equation can be written in matrix notation as[13]

The general equation can also be written as

This form is a specialization of the homogeneous form used in the more general setting of projective geometry (see below).

Discriminant
The conic sections described by this equation can be classified in terms of the value , called the discriminant of the

equation.[14] Thus, the discriminant is − 4Δ where Δ is the matrix determinant

If the conic is non-degenerate, then:[15]

if B2 − 4AC < 0, the equation represents an ellipse;

if A = C and B = 0, the equation represents a circle, which is a special case of an ellipse;

if B2 − 4AC = 0, the equation represents a parabola;
if B2 − 4AC > 0, the equation represents a hyperbola;

if A + C = 0, the equation represents a rectangular hyperbola.

In the notation used here, A and B are polynomial coefficients, in contrast to some sources that denote the semimajor and
semiminor axes as A and B.
Invariants

The discriminant B2 – 4AC of the conic section's quadratic equation (or equivalently the determinant AC – B2/4 of the 2×2
matrix) and the quantity A + C (the trace of the 2×2 matrix) are invariant under arbitrary rotations and translations of the
coordinate axes,[15][16][17] as is the determinant of the 3×3 matrix above.[18]:pp. 60–62 The constant term F and the sum D2+E2 are
invariant under rotation only.[18]:pp. 60–62

Eccentricity in terms of coefficients

When the conic section is written algebraically as

the eccentricity can be written as a function of the coefficients of the quadratic equation.[19] If 4AC = B2 the conic is a parabola and
its eccentricity equals 1 (provided it is non-degenerate). Otherwise, assuming the equation represents either a non-degenerate
hyperbola or ellipse, the eccentricity is given by

where η = 1 if the determinant of the 3×3 matrix above is negative and η = −1 if that determinant is positive.

It can also be shown[18]:p. 89 that the eccentricity is a positive solution of the equation

where again This has precisely one positive solution—the eccentricity— in the case of a parabola or ellipse, while
in the case of a hyperbola it has two positive solutions, one of which is the eccentricity.

Conversion to canonical form

In the case of an ellipse or hyperbola, the equation

can be converted to canonical form in transformed variables as[20]

or equivalently

where and are the eigenvalues of the matrix — that is, the solutions of the equation

— and is the determinant of the 3×3 matrix above, and is again the determinant of the 2×2 matrix. In the case of an
ellipse the squares of the two semi-axes are given by the denominators in the canonical form.

Polar coordinates
In polar coordinates, a conic section with one focus at the origin and, if any, the
other at a negative value (for an ellipse) or a positive value (for a hyperbola) on
the x-axis, is given by the equation

where e is the eccentricity and l is the semi-latus rectum.

As above, for e = 0, the graph is a circle, for 0 < e < 1the graph is an ellipse, for
e = 1 a parabola, and for e > 1 a hyperbola.

The polar form of the equation of a conic is often used in dynamics; for instance,
determining the orbits of objects revolving about the Sun. [21]
Development of the conic section as the
eccentricity e increases
Properties
Just as two (distinct) points determine a line, five points determine a conic.
Formally, given any five points in the plane in general linear position, meaning no three collinear, there is a unique conic passing
through them, which will be non-degenerate; this is true in both the Euclidean plane and its extension, the real projective plane.
Indeed, given any five points there is a conic passing through them, but if three of the points are collinear the conic will be
degenerate (reducible, because it contains a line), and may not be unique; see further discussion.

Four points in the plane in general linear position determine a unique conic passing through the first three points and having the
fourth point as its center. Thus knowing the center is equivalent to knowing two points on the conic for the purpose of determining
the curve.[22]

Furthermore, a conic is determined by any combination of k points in general position that it passes through and 5 – k lines that
are tangent to it, for 0≤k≤5.[23]

Any point in the plane is on either zero, one or two tangent lines of a conic. A point on just one tangent line is on the conic. A point
on no tangent line is said to be an interior point (or inner point) of the conic, while a point on two tangent lines is an exterior
point (or outer point).

All the conic sections share a reflection property that can be stated as: All mirrors in the shape of a non-degenerate conic section
reflect light coming from or going toward one focus toward or away from the other focus. In the case of the parabola, the second
focus needs to be thought of as infinitely far away, so that the light rays going toward or coming from the second focus are
parallel.[24][25]

Pascal's theorem concerns the collinearity of three points that are constructed from a set of six points on any non-degenerate conic.
The theorem also holds for degenerate conics consisting of two lines, but in that case it is known as Pappus's theorem.

Non-degenerate conic sections are always "smooth". This is important for many applications, such as aerodynamics, where a
smooth surface is required to ensure laminar flow and to prevent turbulence.

History

Menaechmus and early works

It is believed that the first definition of a conic section is due to Menaechmus (died 320 BCE) as part of his solution[26] of the Delian
problem (Duplicating the cube).[27] His work did not survive, not even the names he used for these curves, and is only known
through secondary accounts.[28] The definition used at that time differs from the one commonly used today. Cones were
constructed by rotating a right triangle about one of its legs so the hypotenuse generates the surface of the cone (such a line is called
a generatrix). Three types of cones were determined by their vertex angles (measured by twice the angle formed by the hypotenuse
and the leg being rotated about in the right triangle). The conic section was then determined by intersecting one of these cones with
a plane drawn perpendicular to a generatrix. The type of the conic is determined by the type of cone, that is, by the angle formed at
the vertex of the cone: If the angle is acute then the conic is an ellipse; if the angle is right then the conic is a parabola; and if the
angle is obtuse then the conic is a hyperbola (but only one branch of the curve).[29]

Euclid (fl. 300 BCE) is said to have written four books on conics but these were lost as well.[30] Archimedes (died c. 212 BCE) is
known to have studied conics, having determined the area bounded by a parabola and a chord in Quadrature of the Parabola. His
main interest was in terms of measuring areas and volumes of figures related to the conics and part of this work survives in his
book on the solids of revolution of conics, On Conoids and Spheroids.[31]

Apollonius of Perga
The greatest progress in the study of conics by the ancient Greeks is due to Apollonius of
Perga (died c. 190 BCE), whose eight-volume Conic Sections or Conics summarized and
greatly extended existing knowledge. Apollonius's study of the properties of these curves
made it possible to show that any plane cutting a fixed double cone (two napped),
regardless of its angle, will produce a conic according to the earlier definition, leading to
the definition commonly used today. Circles, not constructible by the earlier method,
are also obtainable in this way. This may account for why Apollonius considered circles
a fourth type of conic section, a distinction that is no longer made. Apollonius used the Diagram from Apollonius' Conics, in
names ellipse, parabola and hyperbola for these curves, borrowing the terminology a 9th-century Arabic translation
from earlier Pythagorean work on areas.[32]

Pappus of Alexandria (died c. 350 CE) is credited with expounding on the importance of the concept of a conic's focus, and detailing
the related concept of a directrix, including the case of the parabola (which is lacking in Apollonius's known works).[33]

Al-Kuhi
An instrument for drawing conic sections was first described in 1000 CE by the Islamic mathematician Al-Kuhi.[34][35]

Omar Khayyám
Apollonius's work was translated into Arabic and much of his work only survives through the Arabic version. Persians found
applications to the theory; the most notable of these was the Persian[36] mathematician and poet Omar Khayyám, who used conic
sections to solve algebraic equations.[37]

Europe
Johannes Kepler extended the theory of conics through the "principle of continuity", a precursor to the concept of limits. Kepler
first used the term foci in 1604.[38]

Girard Desargues and Blaise Pascal developed a theory of conics using an early form of projective geometry and this helped to
provide impetus for the study of this new field. In particular, Pascal discovered a theorem known as the hexagrammum mysticum
from which many other properties of conics can be deduced.

René Descartes and Pierre Fermat both applied their newly discovered analytic geometry to the study of conics. This had the effect
of reducing the geometrical problems of conics to problems in algebra. However, it was John Wallis in his 1655 treatise Tractatus
de sectionibus conicis who first defined the conic sections as instances of equations of second degree.[39] Written earlier, but
published later, Jan de Witt's Elementa Curvarum Linearum starts with Kepler's kinematic construction of the conics and then
develops the algebraic equations. This work, which uses Fermat's methodology and Descartes' notation has been described as the
first textbook on the subject.[40] De Witt invented the term directrix.[40]

Applications
Conic sections are important in astronomy: the orbits of two massive objects that
interact according to Newton's law of universal gravitation are conic sections if their
common center of mass is considered to be at rest. If they are bound together, they will
both trace out ellipses; if they are moving apart, they will both follow parabolas or
hyperbolas. See two-body problem.

The reflective properties of the conic sections are used in the design of searchlights,
radio-telescopes and some optical telescopes.[41] A parabolic mirror is used as the
reflector, with a bulb at the focus, in a searchlight. The 4.2 meter Herschel optical
telescope on La Palma, in the Canary islands, uses a primary parabolic mirror to reflect The paraboloid shape of
light towards a secondary hyperbolic mirror, which reflects it again to a focus behind Archeocyathids produces conic
sections on rock faces
the first mirror.

In the real projective plane

The conic sections have some very similar properties in the Euclidean plane and the reasons for this become clearer when the
conics are viewed from the perspective of a larger geometry. The Euclidean plane may be embedded in the real projective plane and
the conics may be considered as objects in this projective geometry. One way to do this is to introduce homogeneous coordinates
and define a conic to be the set of points whose coordinates satisfy an irreducible quadratic equation in three variables (or
equivalently, the zeros of an irreducible quadratic form). More technically, the set of points that are zeros of a quadratic form (in
any number of variables) is called a quadric, and the irreducible quadrics in a two dimensional projective space (that is, having
three variables) are traditionally called conics.

The Euclidean plane R2 is embedded in the real projective plane by adjoining a line at infinity (and its corresponding points at
infinity) so that all the lines of a parallel class meet on this line. On the other hand, starting with the real projective plane, a
Euclidean plane is obtained by distinguishing some line as the line at infinity and removing it and all its points.

Intersection at infinity
In a projective space over any division ring, but in particular over either the real or complex numbers, all non-degenerate conics are
equivalent, and thus in projective geometry one simply speaks of "a conic" without specifying a type. That is, there is a projective
transformation that will map any non-degenerate conic to any other non-degenerate conic.[42]

The three types of conic sections will reappear in the affine plane obtained by choosing a line of the projective space to be the line at
infinity. The three types are then determined by how this line at infinity intersects the conic in the projective space. In the
corresponding affine space, one obtains an ellipse if the conic does not intersect the line at infinity, a parabola if the conic intersects
the line at infinity in one double point corresponding to the axis, and a hyperbola if the conic intersects the line at infinity in two
points corresponding to the asymptotes.[43]

Homogeneous coordinates
In homogeneous coordinates a conic section can be represented as:

Or in matrix notation

The 3 × 3 matrix above is called the matrix of the conic section.

Some authors prefer to write the general homogeneous equation as

(or some variation of this) so that the matrix of the conic section has the simpler form,

but this notation is not used in this article.[44]

If the determinant of the matrix of the conic section is zero, the conic section is degenerate.

As multiplying all six coefficients by the same non-zero scalar yields an equation with the same set of zeros, one can consider
conics, represented by (A, B, C, D, E, F) as points in the five-dimensional projective space

Projective definition of a circle

Metrical concepts of Euclidean geometry (concepts concerned with measuring lengths and angles) can not be immediately
extended to the real projective plane.[45] They must be redefined (and generalized) in this new geometry. This can be done for
arbitrary projective planes, but to obtain the real projective plane as the extended Euclidean plane, some specific choices have to be
made.[46]

Fix an arbitrary line in a projective plane that shall be referred to as the absolute line. Select two distinct points on the absolute
line and refer to them as absolute points. Several metrical concepts can be defined with reference to these choices. For instance,
given a line containing the points A and B, the midpoint of line segment AB is defined as the point C which is the projective
harmonic conjugate of the point of intersection of AB and the absolute line, with respect to A and B.

A conic in a projective plane that contains the two absolute points is called a circle. Since five points determine a conic, a circle
(which may be degenerate) is determined by three points. To obtain the extended Euclidean plane, the absolute line is chosen to be
the line at infinity of the Euclidean plane and the absolute points are two special points on that line called the circular points at
infinity. Lines containing two points with real coordinates do not pass through the circular points at infinity, so in the Euclidean
plane a circle, under this definition, is determined by three points that are not collinear.[47]

It has been mentioned that circles in the Euclidean plane can not be defined by the focus-directrix property. However, if one were
to consider the line at infinity as the directrix, then by taking the eccentricity to be e = 0 a circle will have the focus-directrix
property, but it is still not defined by that property.[48] One must be careful in this situation to correctly use the definition of
eccentricity as the ratio of the distance of a point on the circle to the focus (length of a radius) to the distance of that point to the
directrix (this distance is infinite) which gives the limiting value of zero.

Steiner's projective conic definition

A synthetic (without the use of coordinates) approach to defining the conic sections in a projective plane was given by Jakob Steiner
in 1867.

Given two pencils of lines at two points (all lines containing and resp.) and a projective but not
perspective mapping of onto . Then the intersection points of corresponding lines form a non-degenerate
projective conic section.[49][50][51][52]
A perspective mapping of a pencil onto a pencil is a bijection (1-1 correspondence) such that corresponding lines
intersect on a fixed line , which is called the axis of the perspectivity .

A projective mapping is a finite sequence of perspective mappings.

As a projective mapping in a projective plane over a field (pappian plane) is uniquely determined by prescribing the images of three
lines,[53] for the Steiner generation of a conic section, besides two points only the images of 3 lines have to be given. These 5
items (2 points, 3 lines) uniquely determine the conic section.
Line conics
By the Principle of Duality in a projective plane, the dual of each point is a line, and the
dual of a locus of points (a set of points satisfying some condition) is called an envelope
of lines. Using Steiner's definition of a conic (this locus of points will now be referred to
as a point conic) as the meet of corresponding rays of two related pencils, it is easy to
dualize and obtain the corresponding envelope consisting of the joins of corresponding
points of two related ranges (points on a line) on different bases (the lines the points are
on). Such an envelope is called a line conic (or dual conic).

In the real projective plane, a point conic has the property that every line meets it in two
points (which may coincide, or may be complex) and any set of points with this property
is a point conic. It follows dually that a line conic has two of its lines through every point
and any envelope of lines with this property is a line conic. At every point of a point
conic there is a unique tangent line, and dually, on every line of a line conic there is a Definition of the Steiner generation
unique point called a point of contact. An important theorem states that the tangent of a conic section
lines of a point conic form a line conic, and dually, the points of contact of a line conic
form a point conic.[54]

Von Staudt's definition

Karl Georg Christian von Staudt defined a conic as the point set given by all the absolute points of a polarity that has absolute
points. Von Staudt introduced this definition in Geometrie der Lage (1847) as part of his attempt to remove all metrical concepts
from projective geometry.

A polarity, π, of a projective plane, P, is an involutory (i.e., of order two) bijection between the points and the lines of P that
preserves the incidence relation. Thus, a polarity relates a point Q with a line q and, following Gergonne, q is called the polar of Q
and Q the pole of q.[55] An absolute point (line) of a polarity is one which is incident with its polar (pole).[56]

A von Staudt conic in the real projective plane is equivalent to a Steiner conic.[57]

Constructions
A conic can not be constructed as a continuous curve (or two) with straightedge and compass. However, there are several methods
that are used to construct as many individual points on a conic, with straightedge and compass, as desired.

One of them is based on the converse of Pascal's theorem, namely, if the points of intersection of opposite sides of a hexagon are
collinear, then the six vertices lie on a conic. Specifically, given five points, A, B, C, D, E and a line passing through E, say EG, \a
point F that lies on this line and is on the conic determined by the five points can be constructed. Let AB meet DE in L, BC meet
EG in M and let CD meet LM at N. Then AN meets EG at the required point F.[58] By varying the line through E,as many
additional points on the conic as desired can be constructed.

Another method, based on Steiner's construction and which is useful in engineering applications, is the parallelogram method,
where a conic is constructed point by point by means of connecting certain equally spaced points on a horizontal line and a vertical
x2 y2
line.[59] Specifically, to construct the ellipse with equation 2 + = 1, first construct the rectangle ABCD with vertices
a b2
A(a, 0), B(a, 2b), C(−a, 2b) and D(−a, 0). Divide the side BC into n equal segments and use parallel projection, with respect to
b
the diagonal AC, to form equal segments on side AB (the lengths of these segments will be times the length of the segments on
a
BC). On the side BC label the left-hand endpoints of the segments with A1 to An starting at B and going towards C. On the side AB
label the upper endpoints D1 to Dn starting at A and going towards B. The points of intersection, AAi ∩ DDi for 1 ≤ i ≤ n will be
points of the ellipse between A and P(0, b). The labeling associates the lines of the pencil through A with the lines of the pencil
through D projectively but not perspectively. The sought for conic is obtained by this construction since three points A, D and P
and two tangents (the vertical lines at A and D) uniquely determine the conic. If another diameter (and its conjugate diameter) are
used instead of the major and minor axes of the ellipse, a parallelogram that is not a rectangle is used in the construction, giving the
name of the method. The association of lines of the pencils can be extended to obtain other points on the ellipse. The constructions
for hyperbolas[60] and parabolas[61] are similar.
Yet another general method uses the polarity property to construct the tangent envelope
of a conic (a line conic).[62]

In the complex projective plane

Further unification is possible if one allows complex numbers as coefficients. In the
complex projective plane the non-degenerate conics can not be distinguished from one
another.

Over the complex numbers ellipses and hyperbolas are not distinct, since −1 is a square;
precisely, the ellipse becomes a hyperbola under the substitution
geometrically a complex rotation, yielding – a hyperbola is simply an
Parallelogram method for
ellipse with an imaginary axis length. Thus there is a 2-way classification:
constructing an ellipse
ellipse/hyperbola and parabola. Geometrically, this corresponds to intersecting the line
at infinity in either 2 distinct points (corresponding to two asymptotes) or in 1 double
point (corresponding to the axis of a parabola), and thus the real hyperbola is a more suggestive image for the complex
ellipse/hyperbola, as it also has 2 (real) intersections with the line at infinity.

It can be proven that in the complex projective plane CP2 two conic sections have four points in common (if one accounts for
multiplicity), so there are never more than 4 intersection points and there is always one intersection point (possibilities: four
distinct intersection points, two singular intersection points and one double intersection points, two double intersection points, one
singular intersection point and 1 with multiplicity 3, 1 intersection point with multiplicity 4). If there exists at least one intersection
point with multiplicity > 1, then the two conic sections are said to be tangent. If there is only one intersection point, which has
multiplicity 4, the two conic sections are said to be osculating.[63]

Furthermore, each straight line intersects each conic section twice. If the intersection point is double, the line is said to be tangent
and it is called the tangent line. Because every straight line intersects a conic section twice, each conic section has two points at
infinity (the intersection points with the line at infinity). If these points are real, the conic section is a hyperbola, if they are
imaginary conjugated, the conic section is an ellipse, if the conic section has one double point at infinity it is a parabola. If the
points at infinity are (1,i,0) and (1,-i,0), the conic section is a circle (see circular points at infinity). If a conic section has one real
and one imaginary point at infinity, or two imaginary points that are not conjugated then it is not a real conic section, because its
coefficients cannot be real.

Degenerate cases
What should be considered as a degenerate case of a conic depends on the definition being used and the geometric setting for the
conic section. There are some authors who define a conic as a two-dimensional nondegenerate quadric. With this terminology there
are no degenerate conics (only degenerate quadrics), but we shall use the more traditional terminology and avoid that definition.

In the Euclidean plane, using the geometric definition, a degenerate case arises when the cutting plane passes through the apex of
the cone. The degenerate conic is either: a point, when the plane intersects the cone only at the apex; a straight line, when the plane
is tangent to the cone (it contains exactly one generator of the cone); or a pair of intersecting lines (two generators of the cone).[64]
These correspond respectively to the limiting forms of an ellipse, parabola, and a hyperbola.

If a conic in the Euclidean plane is being defined by the zeros of a quadratic equation (that is, as a quadric), then the degenerate
conics are: the empty set, a point, or a pair of lines which may be parallel, intersect at a point, or coincide. The empty set case may
correspond either to a pair of complex conjugate parallel lines such as with the equation or to an imaginary ellipse,
such as with the equation An imaginary ellipse does not satisfy the general definition of a degeneracy, and is thus
not normally considered as degenerated. The two lines case occurs when the quadratic expression factors into two linear factors,
the zeros of each giving a line. In the case that the factors are the same, the corresponding lines coincide and we refer to the line as
a double line (a line with multiplicity 2) and this is the previous case of a tangent cutting plane.

In the real projective plane, since parallel lines meet at a point on the line at infinity, the parallel line case of the Euclidean plane
can be viewed as intersecting lines. However, as the point of intersection is the apex of the cone, the cone itself degenerates to a
cylinder, i.e. with the apex at infinity. Other sections in this case are called cylindric sections.[65] The non-degenerate cylindrical
sections are ellipses (or circles).

When viewed from the perspective of the complex projective plane, the degenerate cases of a real quadric (i.e., the quadratic
equation has real coefficients) can all be considered as a pair of lines, possibly coinciding. The empty set may be the line at infinity
considered as a double line, a (real) point is the intersection of two complex conjugate lines and the other cases as previously
mentioned.

To distinguish the degenerate cases from the non-degenerate cases (including the empty set with the latter) using matrix notation,
B2 2 − AE2
let β be the determinant of the 3×3 matrix of the conic section—that is, β = (AC −
4
)F + BED − CD
4
; and let α = B2 − 4AC
be the discriminant. Then the conic section is non-degenerate if and only if β ≠ 0. If β = 0 we have a point when α < 0, two parallel
lines (possibly coinciding) when α = 0, or two intersecting lines when α > 0.[66]

Pencil of conics
A (non-degenerate) conic is completely determined by five points in general position (no three collinear) in a plane and the system
of conics which pass through a fixed set of four points (again in a plane and no three collinear) is called a pencil of conics.[67] The
four common points are called the base points of the pencil. Through any point other than a base point, there passes a single conic
of the pencil. This concept generalizes a pencil of circles.

In a projective plane defined over an algebraically closed field any two conics meet in four points (counted with multiplicity) and so,
determine the pencil of conics based on these four points. Furthermore, the four base points determine three line pairs (degenerate
conics through the base points, each line of the pair containing exactly two base points) and so each pencil of conics will contain at
most three degenerate conics.[68]

A pencil of conics can represented algebraically in the following way. Let C1 and C2 be two distinct conics in a projective plane
defined over an algebraically closed field K. For every pair λ, μ of elements of K, not both zero, the expression:

represents a conic in the pencil determined by C1 and C2. This symbolic representation can be made concrete with a slight abuse of
notation (using the same notation to denote the object as well as the equation defining the object.) Thinking of C1, say, as a ternary
quadratic form, then C1 = 0 is the equation of the "conic C1". Another concrete realization would be obtained by thinking of C1 as
the 3×3 symmetric matrix which represents it. If C1 and C2 have such concrete realizations then every member of the above pencil
will as well. Since the setting uses homogeneous coordinates in a projective plane, two concrete representations (either equations or
matrices) give the same conic if they differ by a non-zero multiplicative constant.

Intersecting two conics

The solutions to a system of two second degree equations in two variables may be viewed as the coordinates of the points of
intersection of two generic conic sections. In particular two conics may possess none, two or four possibly coincident intersection
points. An efficient method of locating these solutions exploits the homogeneous matrix representation of conic sections, i.e. a 3x3
symmetric matrix which depends on six parameters.

The procedure to locate the intersection points follows these steps, where the conics are represented by matrices:

given the two conics and , consider the pencil of conics given by their linear combination
identify the homogeneous parameters which correspond to the degenerate conic of the pencil. This can be done by
imposing the condition that and solving for and . These turn out to be the solutions of a third degree
equation.
given the degenerate conic , identify the two, possibly coincident, lines constituting it.
intersect each identified line with either one of the two original conics; this step can be done efficiently using the dual conic
representation of
the points of intersection will represent the solutions to the initial equation system.

Generalizations
Conics may be defined over other fields (that is, in other pappian geometries). However, some care must be used when the field has
characteristic 2, as some formulas can not be used. For example, the matrix representations used above require division by 2.

A generalization of a non-degenerate conic in a projective plane is an oval. An oval is a point set that has the following properties,
which are held by conics: 1) any line intersects an oval in none, one or two points, 2) at any point of the oval there exists a unique
tangent line.

Generalizing the focus properties of conics to the case where there are more than two foci produces sets called generalized conics.

In other areas of mathematics

The classification into elliptic, parabolic, and hyperbolic is pervasive in mathematics, and often divides a field into sharply distinct
subfields. The classification mostly arises due to the presence of a quadratic form (in two variables this corresponds to the
associated discriminant), but can also correspond to eccentricity.

Quadratic form classifications:

Quadratic forms
Quadratic forms over the reals are classified by Sylvester's law of inertia, namely by their positive
index, zero index, and negative index: a quadratic form in n variables can be converted to a diagonal
form, as where the number of +1 coefficients, k, is the
positive index, the number of −1 coefficients, ℓ, is the negative index, and the remaining variables are
the zero index m, so In two variables the non-zero quadratic forms are classified as:
– positive-definite (the negative is also included), corresponding to ellipses,
– degenerate, corresponding to parabolas, and
– indefinite, corresponding to hyperbolas.
In two variables quadratic forms are classified by discriminant, analogously to conics, but in higher
dimensions the more useful classification is as definite, (all positive or all negative), degenerate, (some
zeros), or indefinite (mix of positive and negative but no zeros). This classification underlies many that
follow.
Curvature
The Gaussian curvature of a surface describes the infinitesimal geometry, and may at each point be
either positive – elliptic geometry, zero – Euclidean geometry (flat, parabola), or negative – hyperbolic
geometry; infinitesimally, to second order the surface looks like the graph of (or 0), or
. Indeed, by the uniformization theorem every surface can be taken to be globally (at every
point) positively curved, flat, or negatively curved. In higher dimensions the Riemann curvature tensor is
a more complicated object, but manifolds with constant sectional curvature are interesting objects of
study, and have strikingly different properties, as discussed at sectional curvature.
Second order PDEs
Partial differential equations (PDEs) of second order are classified at each point as elliptic, parabolic, or
hyperbolic, accordingly as their second order terms correspond to an elliptic, parabolic, or hyperbolic
quadratic form. The behavior and theory of these different types of PDEs are strikingly different –
representative examples is that the Poisson equation is elliptic, the heat equation is parabolic, and the
wave equation is hyperbolic.

Eccentricity classifications include:

Möbius transformations
Real Möbius transformations (elements of PSL2(R) or its 2-fold cover, SL2(R)) are classified as elliptic,
parabolic, or hyperbolic accordingly as their half-trace is or
mirroring the classification by eccentricity.
Variance-to-mean ratio
The variance-to-mean ratio classifies several important families of discrete probability distributions: the
constant distribution as circular (eccentricity 0), binomial distributions as elliptical, Poisson distributions
as parabolic, and negative binomial distributions as hyperbolic. This is elaborated at cumulants of some
discrete probability distributions.
See also
Circumconic and inconic
Conic Sections Rebellion, protests by Yale university students
Director circle
Elliptic coordinate system
Equidistant set
Nine-point conic
Parabolic coordinates
Quadratic function

Notes
1. Eves 1963, p. 319
2. Brannan, Esplen & Gray 1999, p. 13
3. Wilson & Tracey 1925, pp. 111–124
In this interactive SVG (http://uploa
4. Brannan, Esplen & Gray 1999, pp. 13–16
d.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common
5. Thomas & Finney 1979, p. 434 s/9/9a/Conic_section_interactive_vis
6. Brannan, Esplen & Gray 1999, p. 19; Kendig 2005, pp. 86, 141 ualisation.svg), move left and right
7. Brannan, Esplen & Gray 1999, pp. 11–16 over the SVG image to rotate the
double cone
8. Protter & Morrey 1970, pp. 314–328,585–589
9. Protter & Morrey 1970, pp. 290–314
10. Wilson & Tracey 1925, p. 130
11. the empty set is included as a degenerate conic since it may arise as a solution of
this equation
12. Protter & Morrey 1970, p. 316
13. Brannan, Esplen & Gray 1999, p. 30
14. Fanchi, John R. (2006), Math refresher for scientists and engineers (https://books.g
oogle.com/books?id=75mAJPcAWT8C), John Wiley and Sons, pp. 44–45, ISBN 0-
471-75715-2, Section 3.2, page 45 (https://books.google.com/books?id=75mAJPcA
WT8C&pg=PA45)
15. Protter & Morrey 1970, p. 326
16. Wilson & Tracey 1925, p. 153
17. Pettofrezzo, Anthony, Matrices and Transformations, Dover Publ., 1966, p. 110.
18. Spain, Barry, Analytical Conics, Dover, 2007 (originally published 1957 by
Pergamon Press).
19. Ayoub, Ayoub B., "The eccentricity of a conic section," The College Mathematics
Journal 34(2), March 2003, 116–121.
20. Ayoub, A. B., "The central conic sections revisited", Mathematics Magazine 66(5),
1993, 322–325.
21. Brannan, Esplen & Gray 1999, p. 17
22. Whitworth, William Allen. Trilinear Coordinates and Other Methods of Modern
Analytical Geometry of Two Dimensions, Forgotten Books, 2012 (orig. Deighton,
Bell, and Co., 1866), p. 203 http://www.forgottenbooks.com/search?
q=Trilinear+coordinates&t=books
23. Paris Pamfilos, "A gallery of conics by five elements", Forum Geometricorum 14,
2014, 295--348. http://forumgeom.fau.edu/FG2014volume14/FG201431.pdf
24. Brannan, Esplen & Gray 1999, p. 28
25. Downs 2003, pp. 36ff.
26. This solution was rejected by Plato on the grounds that it could not be achieved
using only straightedge and compass.
27. Boyer 2004, pp. 17–18
28. Boyer 2004, p. 18
29. Katz 1998, p. 117
30. Heath, T.L., The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, Vol. I, Dover, 1956, pg.16
31. Eves 1963, p. 28
32. Eves 1963, p. 30
33. Boyer 2004, p. 36
34. Stillwell, John (2010). Mathematics and its history (3rd ed.). New York: Springer.
p. 30. ISBN 1-4419-6052-X.
35. "Apollonius of Perga Conics Books One to Seven" (http://www.math.psu.edu/katok_
s/Commentaries-new.pdf) (PDF). Retrieved 10 June 2011.
36. Turner, Howard R. (1997). Science in medieval Islam: an illustrated introduction (htt
ps://books.google.com/books?id=3VfY8PgmhDMC). University of Texas Press.
p. 53. ISBN 0-292-78149-0., Chapter , p. 53 (https://books.google.com/books?id=3
VfY8PgmhDMC&pg=PA53)
37. Van der Waerden, B. L., Geometry and Algebra in Ancient Civilizations
(Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 1983), p. 73 (https://books.google.cz/books?id
=-pTzCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA73#v=onepage&q&f=false).
38. Katz 1998, p. 126
39. Boyer 2004, p. 110
40. Boyer 2004, p. 114
41. Brannan, Esplen & Gray 1999, p. 27
42. Artzy 2008, p. 158, Thm 3-5.1
43. Artzy 2008, p. 159
44. This form of the equation does not generalize to fields of characteristic two (see
below)
45. Consider finding the midpoint of a line segment with one endpoint on the line at
infinity.
46. Faulkner 1952, p. 71
47. Faulkner 1952, p. 72
48. Eves 1963, p. 320
49. Coxeter 1993, p. 80
50. Hartmann, p. 38
51. Merserve 1983, p. 65
52. Jacob Steiner’s Vorlesungen über synthetische Geometrie, B. G. Teubner, Leipzig
1867 (from Google Books: (German) Part II follows Part I (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=jCgPAAAAQAAJ)) Part II, pg. 96
53. Hartmann, p. 19
54. Faulkner 1952, pp. 48–49
55. Coxeter 1964, p. 60
56. Coxeter and several other authors use the term self-conjugate instead of absolute.
57. Coxeter 1964, p. 80
58. Faulkner 1952, pp. 52–53
59. Downs 2003, p. 5
60. Downs 2003, p. 14
61. Downs 2003, p. 19
62. Akopyan & Zaslavsky 2007, p. 70
63. Wilczynski, E. J. (1916), "Some remarks on the historical development and the
future prospects of the differential geometry of plane curves", Bull. Amer. Math.
Soc., 22: 317–329, doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1916-02785-6 (https://doi.org/10.109
0%2Fs0002-9904-1916-02785-6).
64. Brannan, Esplen & Gray 1999, p. 6
65. "MathWorld: Cylindric section"
(http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CylindricSection.html).
66. Lawrence, J. Dennis (1972), A Catalog of Special Plane Curves, Dover, p. 63,
ISBN 0-486-60288-5
67. Faulkner 1952, pg. 64
68. Samuel 1988, pg. 50

References
Akopyan, A.V.; Zaslavsky, A.A. (2007). Geometry of Conics. American Mathematical Society. ISBN 0-8218-4323-0.
Artzy, Rafael (2008) [1965], Linear Geometry, Dover, ISBN 978-0-486-46627-9
Boyer, Carl B. (2004) [1956], History of Analytic Geometry, Dover, ISBN 978-0-486-43832-0
Brannan, David A.; Esplen, Matthew F.; Gray, Jeremy J. (1999), Geometry, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-
59787-6
Coxeter, H. S. M. (1964), Projective Geometry, Blaisdell
Coxeter, H. S. M. (1993), The Real Projective Plane, Springer Science & Business Media
Downs, J.W. (2003) [1993], Practical Conic Sections / The geometric properties of ellipses, parabolas and hyperbolas, Dover,
ISBN 0-486-42876-1
Eves, Howard (1963), A Survey of Geometry (Volume One), Boston: Allyn and Bacon
Hartmann, Erich, Planar Circle Geometries, an Introduction to Moebius-, Laguerre- and Minkowski Planes (http://www.mathem
atik.tu-darmstadt.de/~ehartmann/circlegeom.pdf) (PDF), retrieved 20 September 2014 (PDF; 891 kB).
Katz, Victor J. (1998), A History of Mathematics / An Introduction (2nd ed.), Addison Wesley Longman, ISBN 978-0-321-
01618-8
Kendig, Keith (2005), Conics, The Mathematical Association of America, ISBN 978-0-88385-335-1
Faulkner, T. E. (1952), Projective Geometry (2nd ed.), Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd
Merserve, Bruce E. (1983) [1959], Fundamental Concepts of Geometry, Dover, ISBN 0-486-63415-9
Protter, Murray H.; Morrey, Jr., Charles B. (1970), College Calculus with Analytic Geometry (2nd ed.), Reading: Addison-
Wesley, LCCN 76087042 (https://lccn.loc.gov/76087042)
Samuel, Pierre (1988), Projective Geometry, Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics (Readings in Mathematics), New York:
Springer-Verlag, ISBN 0-387-96752-4
Thomas, George B.; Finney, Ross L. (1979), Calculus and Analytic Geometry (fifth ed.), Addison-Wesley, p. 434, ISBN 0-201-
07540-7
Wilson, W. A.; Tracey, J. I. (1925), Analytic Geometry (Revised ed.), D.C. Heath and Company

External links
Conic section (Geometry) (https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/132684) at Encyclopædia Britannica
Can You Really Derive Conic Formulae from a Cone? (http://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/can-you-really-deriv
e-conic-formulae-from-a-cone-introduction) archive 2007-07-15 (https://web.archive.org/web/20070715064142/http://mathdl.m
aa.org/convergence/1/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=196&bodyId=60) Gary S. Stoudt (Indiana University of
Pennsylvania
Conic sections (http://xahlee.org/SpecialPlaneCurves_dir/ConicSections_dir/conicSections.html) at Special plane curves (htt
p://xahlee.org/SpecialPlaneCurves_dir/specialPlaneCurves.html).
Weisstein, Eric W. "Conic Section" (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ConicSection.html). MathWorld.
Occurrence of the conics. Conics in nature and elsewhere (http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/jbconics.htm).
See Conic Sections (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/proofs/conics.shtml) at cut-the-knot (http://www.cut-the-knot.org) for a sharp
proof that any finite conic section is an ellipse and Xah Lee (http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html) for a similar treatment of
other conics.
Eight Point Conic (https://web.archive.org/web/20091025083524/http://math.kennesaw.edu/~mdevilli/eightpointconic.html) at
Dynamic Geometry Sketches (https://web.archive.org/web/20090321024112/http://math.kennesaw.edu/~mdevilli/JavaGSPLink
s.htm)
Second-order implicit equation locus (http://archive.geogebra.org/en/upload/files/nikenuke/conics04b.html) An interactive Java
conics grapher; uses a general second-order implicit equation.

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Circle
A circle is a simple closed shape. It is the set of all points in a plane that are at a given
Circle
distance from a given point, the centre; equivalently it is the curve traced out by a point
that moves so that its distance from a given point is constant. The distance between any
of the points and the centre is called the radius. This article is about circles in Euclidean
geometry, and, in particular, the Euclidean plane, except where otherwise noted.

A circle is a simple closed curve that divides the plane into two regions: an interior and
an exterior. In everyday use, the term "circle" may be used interchangeably to refer to
either the boundary of the figure, or to the whole figure including its interior; in strict
technical usage, the circle is only the boundary and the whole figure is called a disc.

A circle may also be defined as a special kind of ellipse in which the two foci are
coincident and the eccentricity is 0, or the two-dimensional shape enclosing the most
area per unit perimeter squared, using calculus of variations. A circle (black), which is measured
by its circumference (C), diameter
(D) in cyan, and radius (R) in red; its
centre (O) is in magenta.

Euclid's definition
A circle is a plane figure bounded by one line, and such that all right lines drawn from a certain point within it to the
bounding line, are equal. The bounding line is called its circumference and the point, its centre.

— Euclid, Elements, Book I[1]:4

Terminology
Annulus: the ring-shaped object, the region bounded by two concentric circles.
Arc: any connected part of the circle.
Centre: the point equidistant from the points on the circle.
Chord: a line segment whose endpoints lie on the circle.
Circumference: the length of one circuit along the circle, or the distance around the circle.
Diameter: a line segment whose endpoints lie on the circle and which passes through the centre; or the length of such a line
segment, which is the largest distance between any two points on the circle. It is a special case of a chord, namely the longest
chord, and it is twice the radius.
Disc: the region of the plane bounded by a circle.
Lens: the intersection of two discs.
Passant: a coplanar straight line that does not touch the circle.
Radius: a line segment joining the centre of the circle to any point on the circle itself; or the length of such a segment, which is
half a diameter.
Sector: a region bounded by two radii and an arc lying between the radii.
Segment: a region, not containing the centre, bounded by a chord and an arc lying between the chord's endpoints.
Secant: an extended chord, a coplanar straight line cutting the circle at two points.
Semicircle: an arc that extends from one of a diameter's endpoints to the other. In non-technical common usage it may mean
the diameter, arc, and its interior, a two dimensional region, that is technically called a half-disc. A half-disc is a special case of
a segment, namely the largest one.
Tangent: a coplanar straight line that touches the circle at a single point.
 Chord, secant, tangent, radius, and Arc, sector, and segment
diameter

History
The word circle derives from the Greek κίρκος/κύκλος (kirkos/kuklos), itself a metathesis
of the Homeric Greek κρίκος (krikos), meaning "hoop" or "ring".[2] The origins of the words
circus and circuit are closely related.

The circle has been known since before the

beginning of recorded history. Natural circles
would have been observed, such as the Moon, Sun,
and a short plant stalk blowing in the wind on sand,
which forms a circle shape in the sand. The circle is
the basis for the wheel, which, with related
inventions such as gears, makes much of modern
machinery possible. In mathematics, the study of
the circle has helped inspire the development of
geometry, astronomy and calculus.
Circular piece of silk with Mongol The compass in this 13th-
images Early science, particularly geometry and astrology century manuscript is a symbol
and astronomy, was connected to the divine for of God's act of Creation. Notice
most medieval scholars, and many believed that also the circular shape of the
there was something intrinsically "divine" or "perfect" that could be found in circles.[3][4] halo.

Some highlights in the history of the circle are:

1700 BCE – The Rhind papyrus gives a method to find the area of a circular field. The
result corresponds to 256
81
(3.16049...) as an approximate value of π.[5]

300 BCE – Book 3 of Euclid's Elements deals with

the properties of circles.
In Plato's Seventh Letter there is a detailed
definition and explanation of the circle. Plato
explains the perfect circle, and how it is different
from any drawing, words, definition or explanation.
1880 CE – Lindemann proves that π is
transcendental, effectively settling the millennia-old
problem of squaring the circle.[6] Circles in an old Arabic
Tughrul Tower from inside astronomical drawing.

Analytic results
Length of circumference
The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is π (pi), an irrational constant approximately equal to 3.141592654. Thus the
length of the circumference C is related to the radius r and diameter d by:

Area enclosed
As proved by Archimedes, in his Measurement of a Circle, the area enclosed by a circle
is equal to that of a triangle whose base has the length of the circle's circumference and
whose height equals the circle's radius,[7] which comes to π multiplied by the radius
squared:

Equivalently, denoting diameter by d,

that is, approximately 79% of the circumscribing square (whose side is of length d). Area enclosed by a circle = π × area
of the shaded square
The circle is the plane curve enclosing the maximum area for a given arc length. This
relates the circle to a problem in the calculus of variations, namely the isoperimetric
inequality.

Equations

Cartesian coordinates
Equation of a circle
In an x–y Cartesian coordinate system, the circle with centre coordinates (a, b) and
radius r is the set of all points (x, y) such that

This equation, known as the Equation of the Circle, follows from the Pythagorean
theorem applied to any point on the circle: as shown in the adjacent diagram, the radius
is the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle whose other sides are of length |x − a| and
|y − b|. If the circle is centred at the origin (0, 0), then the equation simplifies to
Circle of radius r = 1, centre (a, b)
= (1.2, −0.5)

Parametric form
The equation can be written in parametric form using the trigonometric functions sine and cosine as

where t is a parametric variable in the range 0 to 2π, interpreted geometrically as the angle that the ray from (a, b) to (x, y) makes
with the positive x-axis.

An alternative parametrisation of the circle is:

In this parameterisation, the ratio of t to r can be interpreted geometrically as the stereographic projection of the line passing
through the centre parallel to the x-axis (see Tangent half-angle substitution). However, this parameterisation works only if t is
made to range not only through all reals but also to a point at infinity; otherwise, the bottom-most point of the circle would be
omitted.

3-point-form
The equation of the circle determined by three points not on a line is obtained by a conversion of the 3-
point-form of a circle's equation

Homogeneous form
In homogeneous coordinates, each conic section with the equation of a circle has the form

It can be proven that a conic section is a circle exactly when it contains (when extended to the complex projective plane) the points
I(1: i: 0) and J(1: −i: 0). These points are called the circular points at infinity.

Polar coordinates
In polar coordinates, the equation of a circle is:

where a is the radius of the circle, is the polar coordinate of a generic point on the circle, and is the polar coordinate of
the centre of the circle (i.e., r0 is the distance from the origin to the centre of the circle, and φ is the anticlockwise angle from the
positive x-axis to the line connecting the origin to the centre of the circle). For a circle centred on the origin, i.e. r0 = 0, this reduces
to simply r = a. When r0 = a, or when the origin lies on the circle, the equation becomes

In the general case, the equation can be solved for r, giving

Note that without the ± sign, the equation would in some cases describe only half a circle.

Complex plane
In the complex plane, a circle with a centre at c and radius r has the equation:

In parametric form, this can be written:

The slightly generalised equation

for real p, q and complex g is sometimes called a generalised circle. This becomes the above equation for a circle with
, since . Not all generalised circles are actually circles: a generalised
circle is either a (true) circle or a line.

Tangent lines
The tangent line through a point P on the circle is perpendicular to the diameter passing through P. If P = (x1, y1) and the circle has
centre (a, b) and radius r, then the tangent line is perpendicular to the line from (a, b) to (x1, y1), so it has the form
(x1 − a)x + (y1 – b)y = c. Evaluating at (x1, y1) determines the value of c and the result is that the equation of the tangent is

or

If y1 ≠ b then the slope of this line is

This can also be found using implicit differentiation.

When the centre of the circle is at the origin then the equation of the tangent line becomes

and its slope is

Properties
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 group of rotations alone
is the circle group T.
All circles are similar.

A circle's circumference and radius are proportional.

The area enclosed and the square of its radius are proportional.
The constants of proportionality are 2π and π, respectively.
The circle that is centred at the origin with radius 1 is called the unit circle.

Thought of as a great circle of the unit sphere, it becomes the Riemannian circle.
Through any three points, not all on the same line, there lies a unique circle. In Cartesian coordinates, it is possible to give
explicit formulae for the coordinates of the centre of the circle and the radius in terms of the coordinates of the three given
points. See circumcircle.

Chord
Chords are equidistant from the centre of a circle if and only if they are equal in length.
The perpendicular bisector of a chord passes through the centre of a circle; equivalent statements stemming from the
uniqueness of the perpendicular bisector are:

A perpendicular line from the centre of a circle bisects the chord.

 The line segment through the centre bisecting a chord is perpendicular to the chord.
If a central angle and an inscribed angle of a circle are subtended by the same chord and on the same side of the chord, then
the central angle is twice the inscribed angle.
If two angles are inscribed on the same chord and on the same side of the chord, then they are equal.
If two angles are inscribed on the same chord and on opposite sides of the chord, then they are supplementary.

For a cyclic quadrilateral, the exterior angle is equal to the interior opposite angle.
An inscribed angle subtended by a diameter is a right angle (see Thales' theorem).
The diameter is the longest chord of the circle.

Among all the circles with a chord AB in common, the circle with minimal radius is the one with diameter AB.
If the intersection of any two chords divides one chord into lengths a and b and divides the other chord into lengths c and d,
then ab = cd.
If the intersection of any two perpendicular chords divides one chord into lengths a and b and divides the other chord into
lengths c and d, then a2 + b2 + c2 + d2 equals the square of the diameter.[8]
The sum of the squared lengths of any two chords intersecting at right angles at a given point is the same as that of any other
two perpendicular chords intersecting at the same point, and is given by 8r 2 – 4p 2 (where r is the circle's radius and p is the
distance from the centre point to the point of intersection).[9]
The distance from a point on the circle to a given chord times the diameter of the circle equals the product of the distances
from the point to the ends of the chord.[10]:p.71

Tangent
A line drawn perpendicular to a radius through the end point of the radius lying on the circle is a tangent to the circle.
A line drawn perpendicular to a tangent through the point of contact with a circle passes through the centre of the circle.
Two tangents can always be drawn to a circle from any point outside the circle, and these tangents are equal in length.
If a tangent at A and a tangent at B intersect at the exterior point P, then denoting the centre as O, the angles ∠BOA and
∠BPA are supplementary.
If AD is tangent to the circle at A and if AQ is a chord of the circle, then ∠DAQ = 12 arc(AQ).

Theorems
The chord theorem states that if two chords, CD and EB, intersect at A, then
AC × AD = AB × AE.
If two secants, AE and AD, also cut the circle at B and C respectively, then
AC × AD = AB × AE. (Corollary of the chord theorem.)
A tangent can be considered a limiting case of a secant whose ends are coincident.
If a tangent from an external point A meets the circle at F and a secant from the
external point A meets the circle at C and D respectively, then AF2 = AC × AD.
(Tangent-secant theorem.)
The angle between a chord and the tangent at one of its endpoints is equal to one
half the angle subtended at the centre of the circle, on the opposite side of the
chord (Tangent Chord Angle).
If the angle subtended by the chord at the centre is 90 degrees then ℓ = r √2, where
ℓ is the length of the chord and r is the radius of the circle.
If two secants are inscribed in the circle as shown at right, then the measurement of
Secant-secant theorem
angle A is equal to one half the difference of the measurements of the enclosed
arcs (DE and BC). I.e. 2∠CAB = ∠DOE − ∠BOC, where O is the centre of the
circle. This is the secant-secant theorem.

Inscribed angles
An inscribed angle (examples are the blue and green angles in the figure) is exactly half the corresponding central angle (red).
Hence, all inscribed angles that subtend the same arc (pink) are equal. Angles inscribed on the arc (brown) are supplementary. In
particular, every inscribed angle that subtends a diameter is a right angle (since the central angle is 180 degrees).
 Inscribed angle theorem

Sagitta
The sagitta (also known as the versine) is a line segment drawn
perpendicular to a chord, between the midpoint of that chord and the arc
of the circle.
Given the length y of a chord, and the length x of the sagitta, the
Pythagorean theorem can be used to calculate the radius of the unique
circle that will fit around the two lines:
The sagitta is the vertical segment.

Another proof of this result, which relies only on two chord properties given above, is as follows. Given a chord of length y and with
sagitta of length x, since the sagitta intersects the midpoint of the chord, we know it is part of a diameter of the circle. Since the
diameter is twice the radius, the "missing" part of the diameter is (2r − x) in length. Using the fact that one part of one chord times
the other part is equal to the same product taken along a chord intersecting the first chord, we find that (2r − x)x = (y / 2)2. Solving
for r, we find the required result.

Compass and straightedge constructions

There are many compass-and-straightedge constructions resulting in circles.

The simplest and most basic is the construction given the centre of the circle and a point on the circle. Place the fixed leg of the
compass on the centre point, the movable leg on the point on the circle and rotate the compass.

Construct a circle with a given diameter

Construct the midpoint M of the diameter.
Construct the circle with centre M passing through one of the endpoints of the diameter (it will also pass through the other
endpoint).

Construct a circle through 3 noncollinear points

Name the points P, Q and R,
Construct the perpendicular bisector of the segment PQ.
Construct the perpendicular bisector of the segment PR.
Label the point of intersection of these two perpendicular bisectors M. (They meet because the points are not collinear).
Construct the circle with centre M passing through one of the points P, Q or R (it will also pass through the other two points).

Circle of Apollonius
 Apollonius of Perga showed that a
circle may also be defined as the set of
points in a plane having a constant
ratio (other than 1) of distances to two
fixed foci, A and B.[11][12] (The set of
points where the distances are equal is
the perpendicular bisector of segment
AB, a line.) That circle is sometimes
said to be drawn about two points.
Apollonius' definition of a circle: d1/d2 Construct a circle through points A,
constant The proof is in two parts. First, one B and C by finding the perpendicular
must prove that, given two foci A and B bisectors (red) of the sides of the
and a ratio of distances, any point P triangle (blue). Only two of the three
bisectors are needed to find the
satisfying the ratio of distances must fall on a particular circle. Let C be another point,
centre.
also satisfying the ratio and lying on segment AB. By the angle bisector theorem the line
segment PC will bisect the interior angle APB, since the segments are similar:

Analogously, a line segment PD through some point D on AB extended bisects the corresponding exterior angle BPQ where Q is on
AP extended. Since the interior and exterior angles sum to 180 degrees, the angle CPD is exactly 90 degrees, i.e., a right angle. The
set of points P such that angle CPD is a right angle forms a circle, of which CD is a diameter.

Second, see[13]:p.15 for a proof that every point on the indicated circle satisfies the given ratio.

Cross-ratios
A closely related property of circles involves the geometry of the cross-ratio of points in the complex plane. If A, B, and C are as
above, then the circle of Apollonius for these three points is the collection of points P for which the absolute value of the cross-ratio
is equal to one:

Stated another way, P is a point on the circle of Apollonius if and only if the cross-ratio [A,B;C,P] is on the unit circle in the complex
plane.

Generalised circles
If C is the midpoint of the segment AB, then the collection of points P satisfying the Apollonius condition

is not a circle, but rather a line.

Thus, if A, B, and C are given distinct points in the plane, then the locus of points P satisfying the above equation is called a
"generalised circle." It may either be a true circle or a line. In this sense a line is a generalised circle of infinite radius.

Circles inscribed in or circumscribed about other figures

In every triangle a unique circle, called the incircle, can be inscribed such that it is tangent to each of the three sides of the
triangle.[14]

About every triangle a unique circle, called the circumcircle, can be circumscribed such that it goes through each of the triangle's
three vertices.[15]
A tangential polygon, such as a tangential quadrilateral, is any convex polygon within which a circle can be inscribed that is tangent
to each side of the polygon.[16] Every regular polygon and every triangle is a tangential polygon.

A cyclic polygon is any convex polygon about which a circle can be circumscribed, passing through each vertex. A well-studied
example is the cyclic quadrilateral. Every regular polygon and every triangle is a cyclic polygon. A polygon that is both cyclic and
tangential is called a bicentric polygon.

A hypocycloid is a curve that is inscribed in a given circle by tracing a fixed point on a smaller circle that rolls within and tangent to
the given circle.

Circle as limiting case of other figures

The circle can be viewed as a limiting case of each of various other figures:

A Cartesian oval is a set of points such that a weighted sum of the distances from any of its points to two fixed points (foci) is a
constant. An ellipse is the case in which the weights are equal. A circle is an ellipse with an eccentricity of zero, meaning that
the two foci coincide with each other as the centre of the circle. A circle is also a different special case of a Cartesian oval in
which one of the weights is zero.

A superellipse has an equation of the form for positive a, b, and n. A supercircle has b = a. A circle is the
special case of a supercircle in which n = 2.
A Cassini oval is a set of points such that the product of the distances from any of its points to two fixed points is a constant.
When the two fixed points coincide, a circle results.
A curve of constant width is a figure whose width, defined as the perpendicular distance between two distinct parallel lines
each intersecting its boundary in a single point, is the same regardless of the direction of those two parallel lines. The circle is
the simplest example of this type of figure.

Circles in other p-norms

Defining a circle as the set of points with a fixed distance from a point, different shapes
can be considered circles under different definitions of distance. In p-norm, distance is
determined by

In Euclidean geometry, p = 2, giving the familiar

In taxicab geometry, p = 1. Taxicab circles are squares with sides oriented at a 45° angle
to the coordinate axes. While each side would have length using a Euclidean Illustrations of unit circles (see also
metric, where r is the circle's radius, its length in taxicab geometry is 2r. Thus, a circle's superellipse) in different p-norms
(every vector from the origin to the
circumference is 8r. Thus, the value of a geometric analog to is 4 in this geometry. The
unit circle has a length of one, the
formula for the unit circle in taxicab geometry is in Cartesian coordinates
length being calculated with length-
and formula of the corresponding p).

in polar coordinates.

A circle of radius 1 (using this distance) is the von Neumann neighborhood of its center.

A circle of radius r for the Chebyshev distance (L∞ metric) on a plane is also a square with side length 2r parallel to the coordinate
axes, so planar Chebyshev distance can be viewed as equivalent by rotation and scaling to planar taxicab distance. However, this
equivalence between L1 and L∞ metrics does not generalize to higher dimensions.
Squaring the circle
Squaring the circle is the problem, proposed by ancient geometers, of constructing a square with the same area as a given circle by
using only a finite number of steps with compass and straightedge.

In 1882, the task was proven to be impossible, as a consequence of the Lindemann–Weierstrass theorem, which proves that pi (π)
is a transcendental number, rather than an algebraic irrational number; that is, it is not the root of any polynomial with rational
coefficients.

See also
Affine sphere
Annulus (mathematics) Of a triangle Of certain quadrilaterals
Apeirogon Mandart circle Eight-point circle of an orthodiagonal
Circle fitting Spieker circle quadrilateral
List of circle topics Nine-point circle Incircle of a tangential quadrilateral
Sphere Lemoine circle Circumcircle of a cyclic quadrilateral
Three points determine a Circumcircle
circle
Incircle Of certain polygons
Translation of axes
Excircle
Circumcircle of a cyclic polygon
Apollonius circle of the
excircles Incircle of a tangential polygon
Specially named circles
Lester circle
Unit circle Malfatti circles Of a conic section
Apollonian circles Brocard circle
Chromatic circle Director circle
Orthocentroidal circle
Ford circle Directrix circle
Van Lamoen circle
Circle of antisimilitude Parry circle
Carlyle circle Polar circle (geometry) Of a sphere
Bankoff circle
Great circle
Archimedes' twin circles
Riemannian circle
Archimedean circle
Johnson circles
Schoch circles Of a torus

Woo circles Villarceau circles

References
1. OL 7227282M (https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7227282M)
2. krikos (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dkri%2Fkos) Archived
(https://web.archive.org/web/20131106164504/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.00
57%3Aentry%3Dkri%2Fkos) 2013-11-06 at the Wayback Machine., Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English
Lexicon, on Perseus
3. Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (1959)
4. Proclus, The Six Books of Proclus, the Platonic Successor, on the Theology of Plato (https://books.google.com/books?id=E1H
YAAAAMAAJ) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20170123072440/https://books.google.com/books?id=E1HYAAAAMAAJ)
2017-01-23 at the Wayback Machine. Tr. Thomas Taylor (1816) Vol. 2, Ch. 2, "Of Plato"
5. Chronology for 30000 BC to 500 BC (http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Chronology/30000BC_500BC.html#1700
BC) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20080322085509/http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Chronology/3000
0BC_500BC.html) 2008-03-22 at the Wayback Machine.. History.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved on 2012-05-03.
 6. Squaring the circle (http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/HistTopics/Squaring_the_circle.html) Archived (https://we
b.archive.org/web/20080624144640/http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/HistTopics/Squaring_the_circle.html)
2008-06-24 at the Wayback Machine.. History.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved on 2012-05-03.
7. Katz, Victor J. (1998), A History of Mathematics / An Introduction (2nd ed.), Addison Wesley Longman, p. 108, ISBN 978-0-
321-01618-8
8. Posamentier and Salkind, Challenging Problems in Geometry, Dover, 2nd edition, 1996: pp. 104–105, #4–23.
9. College Mathematics Journal 29(4), September 1998, p. 331, problem 635.
10. Johnson, Roger A., Advanced Euclidean Geometry, Dover Publ., 2007.
11. Harkness, James (1898). Introduction to the theory of analytic functions (http://dlxs2.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=mat
h;idno=01680002). London, New York: Macmillan and Co. p. 30.
12. Ogilvy, C. Stanley, Excursions in Geometry, Dover, 1969, 14–17.
13. Altshiller-Court, Nathan, College Geometry, Dover, 2007 (orig. 1952).
14. Incircle – from Wolfram MathWorld (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Incircle.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/201201
21111333/http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Incircle.html) 2012-01-21 at the Wayback Machine.. Mathworld.wolfram.com (2012-
04-26). Retrieved on 2012-05-03.
15. Circumcircle – from Wolfram MathWorld (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Circumcircle.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/we
b/20120120120814/http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Circumcircle.html) 2012-01-20 at the Wayback Machine..
Mathworld.wolfram.com (2012-04-26). Retrieved on 2012-05-03.
16. Tangential Polygon – from Wolfram MathWorld (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TangentialPolygon.html) Archived (https://web.ar
chive.org/web/20130903051014/http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TangentialPolygon.html) 2013-09-03 at the Wayback Machine..
Mathworld.wolfram.com (2012-04-26). Retrieved on 2012-05-03.

Further reading
Pedoe, Dan (1988). Geometry: a comprehensive course. Dover.
"Circle" in The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive (http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Curves/Circle.html)

External links
Hazewinkel, Michiel, ed. (2001) [1994], "Circle" (https://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php?title=p/c022260),
Encyclopedia of Mathematics, Springer Science+Business Media B.V. / Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 978-1-55608-010-
4
Circle (PlanetMath.org website)
Weisstein, Eric W. "Circle" (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Circle.html). MathWorld.
Interactive Java applets (http://www.mathopenref.com/tocs/circlestoc.html) for the properties of and elementary constructions
involving circles.
Interactive Standard Form Equation of Circle (http://www.mathwarehouse.com/geometry/circle/interactive-circle-equation.php)
Click and drag points to see standard form equation in action
Munching on Circles (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/pythagoras/Munching/circle.shtml) at cut-the-knot

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Ellipse
In mathematics, an ellipse is a curve in a plane surrounding two focal points such that
the sum of the distances to the two focal points is constant for every point on the curve.
As such, it is a generalization of a circle, which is a special type of an ellipse having both
focal points at the same location. The shape of an ellipse (how "elongated" it is) is
represented by its eccentricity, which for an ellipse can be any number from 0 (the
limiting case of a circle) to arbitrarily close to but less than 1.

Ellipses are the closed type of conic section: a plane curve resulting from the
intersection of a cone by a plane (see figure to the right). Ellipses have many similarities
with the other two forms of conic sections: parabolas and hyperbolas, both of which are
open and unbounded. The cross section of a cylinder is an ellipse, unless the section is
parallel to the axis of the cylinder. An ellipse (red) obtained as the
intersection of a cone with an
Analytically, an ellipse may also be defined as the set of points such that the ratio of the inclined plane
distance of each point on the curve from a given point (called a focus or focal point) to
the distance from that same point on the curve to a given line (called the
directrix) is a constant. This ratio is the above-mentioned eccentricity of
the ellipse.

An ellipse may also be defined analytically as the set of points for each of
which the sum of its distances to two foci is a fixed number.

Ellipses are common in physics, astronomy and engineering. For example,

the orbit of each planet in the solar system is approximately an ellipse with
the barycenter of the planet–Sun pair at one of the focal points. The same
is true for moons orbiting planets and all other systems having two
astronomical bodies. The shapes of planets and stars are often well
described by ellipsoids. Ellipses also arise as images of a circle under
parallel projection and the bounded cases of perspective projection, which Ellipse: notations
are simply intersections of the projective cone with the plane of projection.
It is also the simplest Lissajous figure formed when the horizontal and
vertical motions are sinusoids with the same frequency. A similar effect leads to elliptical polarization of light in optics.

The name, ἔλλειψις (élleipsis, "omission"), was given by Apollonius of Perga in his Conics, emphasizing the connection of the curve
with "application of areas".

Definition of an ellipse as locus of points

An ellipse can be defined geometrically as a set of points (locus of points) in the Euclidean plane:

An ellipse can be defined using two fixed points, , , called the foci and a distance, usually denoted . The ellipse
defined with , and is the set of points such that the sum of the distances is constant and equal to .
In order to omit the special case of a line segment, one assumes More formally, for a given , an ellipse is the
set

The midpoint of the line segment joining the foci is called the center of the ellipse. The line through the foci is called the major
axis, and the line perpendicular to it through the center is called the minor axis. The major axis contains the vertices ,
which have distance to the center. The distance of the foci to the center is called the focal distance or linear eccentricity.
The quotient is the eccentricity .
The case yields a circle and is included.

The equation can be viewed in a different way (see picture):

If is the circle with midpoint and radius , then the distance of a point to the
circle equals the distance to the focus :

is called the circular directrix (related to focus ) of the ellipse.[1][2] This property
should not be confused with the definition of an ellipse with help of a directrix (line)
below.

Using Dandelin spheres one proves easily the important statement:

Any plane section of a cone with a plane, which does not contain the apex and
whose slope is less than the slope of the lines on the cone, is an ellipse.

Ellipse in Cartesian coordinates

Equation
If Cartesian coordinates are introduced such that the origin is the center of the ellipse
and the x-axis is the major axis and

the foci are the points , Ellipses: examples

the vertices are .

For an arbitrary point the distance to the focus is and to

the second focus . Hence the point is on the ellipse if the

following condition is fulfilled

Remove the square roots by suitable squarings and use the relation to
obtain the equation of the ellipse: Ellipse: Definition

or, solved for y,

The shape parameters are called the semi-major and semi-minor axes. The points
are the co-vertices.

It follows from the equation that the ellipse is symmetric with respect to both of the
coordinate axes and hence symmetric with respect to the origin.

Eccentricity Ellipse: definition with director circle

The eccentricity of an ellipse can be expressed in terms of the semi-major and semi-
minor axes as
Semi-latus rectum
The length of the chord through one of the foci, which is perpendicular to the major axis
of the ellipse is called the latus rectum. One half of it is the semi-latus rectum . A
calculation shows
shape parameters:
a: semi-major axis,
b: semi-minor axis
The semi-latus rectum may also be viewed as the radius of curvature of the osculating c: linear eccentricity,
circles at the vertices . p: semi-latus rectum.

Tangent
An arbitrary line intersects an ellipse at 0, 1 or 2 points. In the first case the line is called exterior line, in the second case tangent
and secant in the third case. Through any point of an ellipse there is exactly one tangent.

The tangent at a point of the ellipse has the coordinate equation

A vector equation of the tangent is

with

Proof: Let be an ellipse point and the vector equation of a line (containing ). Inserting

the line's equation into the ellipse equation and respecting yields:

In case of line and the ellipse have only point in common and is a tangent. The tangent direction
is orthogonal to vector which is then a normal vector of the tangent and the tangent has the equation
with a still unknown . Because is on the tangent and on the ellipse, one gets .
In case of line has a second point with the ellipse in common.

With help of (1) one easily checks, that is a tangent vector at point , which proves the vector equation.

Remark: If and are two points of the ellipse, such that holds, then the points lie on two conjugate
diameters of the Ellipse (see below). In case of the ellipse is a circle and "conjugate" means "orthogonal".

Equation of a shifted ellipse

If the ellipse is shifted such that its center is the equation is

The axes are still parallel to the x- and y-axes.

Parametric representation
Standard parametric representation:
Using the sine and cosine functions , a parametric representation of the ellipse
can be obtained, :

Parameter t can be taken as shown in the diagram and is due to de la Hire.[3]

The parameter t (called the eccentric anomaly in astronomy) is not the angle of
with the x-axis (see diagram at right). For other interpretations of
parameter t see section Drawing ellipses. The construction of points based on
the parametric equation and the
Rational representation: interpretation of parameter t, which
With the substitution and trigonometric formulae one gets is due to de la Hire

and the rational parametric equation of an ellipse

which covers any point of the ellipse except the left vertex .
For this formula represents the right upper quarter of the ellipse moving Ellipse points calculated by the
rational representation with equal
counter-clockwise with increasing The left vertex is the limit
spaced parameters ( )

Rational representations of conic sections are popular with Computer Aided Design (see
Bezier curve).

Tangent slope as parameter:

A parametric representation, which uses the slope of the tangent at a point of the ellipse can be obtained from the derivative of
the standard representation :

With help of trigonometric formulae one gets:

Replacing und of the standard representation one yields

Where is the slope of the tangent at the corresponding ellipse point, is the upper and the lower half of the ellipse. The
points with vertical tangents (vertices ) are not covered by the representation.
The equation of the tangent at point has the form . The still unknown can be determined by inserting the
coordinates of the corresponding ellipse point :

This description of the tangents of an ellipse is an essential tool for the determination of the orthoptic of an ellipse. The orthoptic
article contains another proof, which omits differential calculus and trigonometric formulae.
Shifted Ellipse:
A shifted ellipse with center can be described by

A parametric representation of an arbitrary ellipse is contained in the section Ellipse as an affine image of the unit circle x²+y²=1
below.

Remarks on the parameters a and b

The parameters and represent the lengths of line segments and are therefore non-negative real numbers. Throughout this
article is the semi-major axis, i.e., In general the canonical ellipse equation may have (and hence the
ellipse would be taller than it is wide); in this form the semi-major axis would be . This form can be converted to the form assumed
in the remainder of this article simply by transposing the variable names and and the parameter names and

Definition of an ellipse by the directrix property

The two lines at distance and parallel to the minor axis are called

directrices of the ellipse (see diagram).

For an arbitrary point of the ellipse, the quotient of the distance to

one focus and to the corresponding directrix (see diagram) is equal to
the eccentricity:

The proof for the pair follows from the fact that
and
Ellipse: directrix property
satisfy the equation

The second case is proven analogously.

The inverse statement is also true and can be used to define an ellipse (in a manner similar to the definition of a parabola):

For any point (focus), any line (directrix) not through , and any real number with the locus of points for
which the quotient of the distances to the point and to the line is that is,

is an ellipse.

The choice , which is the eccentricity of a circle, is in this context not allowed. One may consider the directrix of a circle to be
the line at infinity.

(The choice yields a parabola, and if , a hyperbola.)

Proof

Let , and assume is a point on the curve. The directrix has equation . With , the
relation produces the equations
 and

The substitution yields

This is the equation of an ellipse ( ), or a parabola ( ), or a hyperbola ( ).

All of these non-degenerate conics have, in common, the origin as a vertex (see
diagram).

If , introduce new parameters so that , and then

the equation above becomes

Pencil of conics with a common

vertex and common semi-latus
rectum
which is the equation of an ellipse with center , the x-axis as major axis, and the
major/minor semi axis .

General case

If the focus is and the directrix , one obtains the equation

(The right side of the equation uses the Hesse normal form of a line to calculate the distance .)

The normal bisects the angle between the lines to the foci
For an ellipse the following statement is true:

The normal at a point bisects the angle between the lines .

Proof

Because the tangent is perpendicular to the normal, the statement is true for the
tangent and the supplementary angle of the angle between the lines to the foci (see
diagram), too.

Let be the point on the line with the distance to the focus , is the Ellipse: the tangent bisects the
semi-major axis of the ellipse. Let line be the bisector of the supplementary supplementary angle of the angle
between the lines to the foci.
angle to the angle between the lines . In order to prove that is the
tangent line at point , one checks that any point on line which is different
from cannot be on the ellipse. Hence has only point in common with the ellipse and is, therefore, the tangent at point .
From the diagram and the triangle inequality one recognizes that holds, which
means: . But if is a point of the ellipse, the sum should be .

Application

The rays from one focus are reflected by the ellipse to the second focus. This property has optical and acoustic applications similar
to the reflective property of a parabola (see whispering gallery).

Ellipse as an affine image of the unit circle x²+y²=1

Another definition of an ellipse uses affine transformations:
 Any ellipse is the affine image of the unit circle with equation .

An affine transformation of the Euclidean plane has the form ,

where is a regular matrix (its determinant is not 0) and is an arbitrary vector.
If are the column vectors of the matrix , the unit circle
is mapped onto the Ellipse

is the center, are the directions of two conjugate diameters of the

Rays from one focus reflect off the ellipse
ellipse. In general the vectors are not perpendicular. That means, in general
to pass through the other focus.
and are not the vertices of the ellipse.

The tangent vector at point is

Because at a vertex the tangent is perpendicular to the major/minor axis

(diameters) of the ellipse one gets the parameter of a vertex from the
equation

Ellipse as an affine image of the unit circle

and hence

(The formulae were used.)

If , then .

The four vertices of the ellipse are

The advantage of this definition is that one gets a simple parametric representation of an arbitrary ellipse, even in the space, if the
vectors are vectors of the Euclidean space.

Conjugate diameters and the midpoints of parallel chords

For a circle, the property (M) holds:

(M) The midpoints of parallel chords lie on

a diameter.

The diameter and the parallel chords are orthogonal. An

affine transformation in general does not preserve
orthogonality but does preserve parallelism and Orthogonal diameters of a circle with a square of tangents,
midpoints of line segments. Hence: property (M) (which midpoints of parallel chords and an affine image, which is an
omits the term orthogonal) is true for any ellipse. ellipse with conjugate diameters, a parallelogram of tangents and
midpoints of chords
Definition

Two diameters of an ellipse are conjugate if the midpoints of chords parallel to lie on
From the diagram one finds:

(T) Two diameters , of an ellipse are conjugate, if the tangents at and

are parallel to and visa versa.

The term conjugate diameters is a kind of generalization of orthogonal.

Considering the parametric equation

of an ellipse, any pair of points belong to a diameter and the pair belongs to its conjugate
diameter.

Orthogonal tangents
For the ellipse the intersection points of orthogonal tangents lie on the
circle .

This circle is called orthoptic of the given ellipse.

Theorem of Apollonios on conjugate

diameters
For an ellipse with semi-axes the following is true:

Let and be halves of two conjugate diameters (see diagram) then Ellipse with its orthoptic

(1) ,
(2) the triangle formed by has the constant area

(3) the parallelogram of tangents adjacent to the given

conjugate diameters has the
Proof

Let the ellipse be in the canonical form with parametric equation

The two points are on conjugate diameters

(see previous section). From trigonometric formulae one gets
and

Ellipse: theorem of Apollonios on conjugate

diameters

The area of the triangle generated by is

and from the diagram it can be seen that the area of the parallelogram is 8 times that of . Hence

Drawing ellipses
Ellipses appear in descriptive geometry as images (parallel or central projection) of
circles (for details: see Ellipses in DG (German)). There exist various tools to draw an
ellipse. Computers provide the fastest and most accurate method for drawing an ellipse.
However, technical tools (ellipsographs) to draw an ellipse without a computer exist.
The principle of ellipsographs were known to Greek mathematicians (Archimedes,
Proklos).

If there is no ellipsograph available, the best and quickest way to draw an ellipse is to
draw an Approximation by the four osculating circles at the vertices.

For any method described below Central projection of circles (gate)

the knowledge of the axes and the semi-axes is necessary (or equivalent: the foci
and the semi-major axis).
If this presumption is not fulfilled one has to know at least two conjugate diameters. With help of Rytz's construction the axes and
semi-axes can be retrieved.

Pins-and-string method
The characterization of an ellipse as the locus of points so that sum of the distances
to the foci is constant leads to a method of drawing one using two drawing pins, a
length of string, and a pencil. In this method, pins are pushed into the paper at two
points, which become the ellipse's foci. A string tied at each end to the two pins
and the tip of a pencil pulls the loop taut to form a triangle. The tip of the pencil
then traces an ellipse if it is moved while keeping the string taut. Using two pegs
and a rope, gardeners use this procedure to outline an elliptical flower bed—thus it
is called the gardener's ellipse.

Ellipse: gardener's method

A similar method for drawing confocal ellipses with a closed string is due to the
Irish bishop Charles Graves.

Paper strip methods

The two following methods rely on the parametric representation (see section parametric representation, above):

This representation can be modeled technically by two simple methods. In both cases center, the axes and semi axes have to be
known.

Method 1

The first method starts with

a strip of paper of length .

The point, where the semi axes meet is marked by . If the strip slides with both ends on the axes of the desired ellipse, then point
P traces the ellipse. For the proof one shows that point has the parametric representation , where parameter is
the angle of the slope of the paper strip.

A technichal realization of the motion of the paper strip can be achieved by a Tusi couple (s. animation). The device is able to draw
any ellipse with a fixed sum , which is the radius of the large circle. This restriction may be a disadvantage in real life. More
flexible is the second paper strip method.

A nice application: If one stands somewhere in the middle of a ladder, which stands on a slippery ground and leans on a slippery
wall, the ladder slides down and the persons feet trace an ellipse.
 Ellipse construction: paper strip method 1 Ellipses with Tusi couple. Two examples: red
and cyan.

A variation of the paper strip method 1[4] uses the observation, that the midpoint of the paper strip is moving on the circle with
center (of the ellipse) and radius . Hence the paperstrip can be cut at point into halves, connected again by a joint at
and the sliding end fixed at the center (see diagram). After this operation the movement of the unchanged half of the
paperstrip is unchanged. The advantage of this variation is: Only one expensive sliding shoe is necessary.
One should be aware that the end, which is sliding on the minor axis, has to be changed.

Variation of the paper strip method 1 Animation of the variation of the paper strip method 1

Method 2

The second method starts with

a strip of paper of length .

One marks the point, which divides the strip into two substrips of length and
. The strip is positioned onto the axes as described in the diagram. Then the
free end of the strip traces an ellipse, while the strip is moved. For the proof, one
recognizes that the tracing point can be described parametrically by
, where parameter is the angle of slope of the paper strip.
Ellipse construction: paper strip method 2
This method is the base for several ellipsographs (see section below).

Remark: Similar to the variation of the paper strip method 1 a variation of the paper strip method 2 can be established (see
diagram) by cutting the part between the axes into halves.
 Trammel of Archimedes (principle) Ellipsograph due to Benjamin Bramer Variation of the paper strip method 2

Approximation by osculating circles

From section metric properties one gets:

The radius of curvature at the vertices is:

the radius of curvature at the co-vertices is:

The diagram shows an easy way to find the centers

of curvature at vertex and co-vertex ,
respectively: Approximation of an ellipse with
osculating circles
(1) mark the auxiliary point and draw the line
segment
(2) draw the line through , which is perpendicular to the line
(3) the intersection points of this line with the axes are the centers of the osculating circles.

(proof: simple calculation.)

The centers for the remaining vertices are found by symmetry.

With help of a French curve one draws a curve, which has smooth contact to the osculating circles.

Steiner generation of an ellipse

The following method to construct single points of an ellipse relies on the Steiner
generation of a non degenerate conic section:

Given two pencils of lines at two points (all lines containing

and , respectively) and a projective but not perspective mapping of
onto , then the intersection points of corresponding lines form a
non-degenerate projective conic section.

For the generation of points of the ellipse one uses the pencils at the
vertices . Let be an upper co-vertex of the ellipse and
. is the center of the rectangle . The side
of the rectangle is divided into n equal spaced line segments and this division
is projected parallel with the diagonal as direction onto the line segment Ellipse: Steiner generation

and assign the division as shown in the diagram. The parallel projection together
with the reverse of the orientation is part of the projective mapping between the
pencils at and needed. The intersection points of any two related lines and are points of the uniquely defined
ellipse. With help of the points the points of the second quarter of the ellipse can be determined. Analogously one gets the
points of the lower half of the ellipse.
Remark:

1. The Steiner generation exists for hyperbolas and parabolas, too.

2. The Steiner generation is sometimes called a parallelogram method because one can
use other points rather than the vertices, which starts with a parallelogram instead of a
rectangle.

Ellipsographs
Most technical instruments for drawing ellipses are based on the second paperstrip
method.

Ellipsenzirkel (German) (http://www.history.didaktik.mathematik.uni-wuerzburg.de/auss Ellipse: Steiner generation

tell/ellipsenzirkel/index.html)
Drawing instruments (http://collectingme.com/drawing/)
For more principles of ellipsographs:

Ellipsographe (French)

Inscribed angles for ellipses and the 3-point-form

Circles
A circle with equation is uniquely determined by
three points not on a line. A simple way to determine the
parameters uses the inscribed angle theorem for circles:

For four points (see diagram) the

following statement is true:
The four points are on a circle if and only if the angles at and
are equal.

Usually one measures inscribed angles by degree or radian . In order to get an equation
of a circle determined by three points, the following measurement is more convenient:

In order to measure an angle between two lines with equations

one uses the quotient Circle: inscribed angle theorem

This expression is the cotangent of the angle between the two lines.

Inscribed angle theorem for circles:

For four points , no three of them on a line (see diagram), the following
statement is true:
The four points are on a circle, if and only if the angles at and are equal. In the sense of the
measurement above, that means, if

At first the masure is available for chords, which are not parallel to the y-axis, only. But the final formula works for any chord.

A consequence of the inscribed angle theorem for circles is the

3-point-form of a circle's equation:

 One gets the equation of the circle determined by 3 points not on a line by a conversion
of the equation

Using vectors, dot products and determinants this formula can be arranged more clearly:

Example:

For the 3-pointform is

, which can be rearranged to

Ellipses
This section considers ellipses with an equation

where the ratio is fixed. With the abbreviation one gets the more convenient form

and fixed.

Such ellipses have their axes parallel to the coordinate axes and their eccentricity fixed. Their major axes are parallel to the x-axis if
and parallel to the y-axis if .

Like a circle, such an ellipse is determined by three points not on a line.

In this more general case one introduces the following measurement of an angle,:[5][6]

In order to measure an angle between two lines with equations

one uses the quotient

Inscribed angle theorem for ellipses Inscribed angle theorem for an

ellipse
For four points , no three of them on a
line (see diagram), the following statement is true:
The four points are on an ellipse with equation , if and only if the angles at
and are equal in the sense of the measurement above—that is, if

At first the measure is available only for chords which are not parallel to the y-axis. But the final formula works for any chord. The
proof follows from a straightforward calculation. For the direction of proof given that the points are on an ellipse, one can assume
that the center of the ellipse is the origin.
A consequence of the inscribed angle theorem for ellipses is the

3-point-form of an ellipse's equation:

One gets the equation of the ellipse determined by 3 points not on a line by a conversion
of the equation

Analogously to the circle case this formula can be written more clearly using vectors:

where is the modified dot product

Example:

For and one gets the 3-point-form

and after conversion

Pole-polar relation for an ellipse

Any ellipse can be described in a suitable coordinate system by an equation
. The equation of the tangent at a point of the ellipse is

If one allows point to be an arbitrary point different

from the origin, then

point is mapped onto the line , not

through the center of the ellipse.
This relation between points and lines is a bijection.
Ellipse: pole-polar relation
The inverse function maps

line onto the point and

line onto the point

Such a relation between points and lines generated by a conic is called pole-polar relation or just polarity. The pole is the point,
the polar the line. See Pole and polar.

By calculation one can confirm the following properties of the pole-polar relation of the ellipse:

For a point (pole) on the ellipse the polar is the tangent at this point (see diagram: ).
For a pole outside the ellipse the intersection points of its polar with the ellipse are the tangency points of the two tangents
passing (see diagram: ).
For a point within the ellipse the polar has no point with the ellipse in common. (see diagram: ).
Remarks:

1. The intersection point of two polars is the pole of the line through their poles.
 2. The foci and respectively and the directrices and respectively belong to pairs of pole and
polar.
Pole-polar relations exist for hyperbolas and parabolas, too.

Metric properties
All metric properties given below refer to an ellipse with equation .

Area
The area enclosed by an ellipse is:

where and are the lengths of the semi-major and semi-minor axes, respectively. The area formula is intuitive: start with a
circle of radius (so its area is ) and stretch it by a factor to make an ellipse. This scales the area by the same factor:
It is also easy to rigorously prove the area formula using integration as follows. Equation (1) can be rewritten as

For this curve is the top half of the ellipse. So twice the integral of over the interval
will be the area of the ellipse:

The second integral is the area of a circle of radius that is, So

An ellipse defined implicitly by has area

Circumference
The circumference of an ellipse is:

where again is the length of the semi-major axis, is the eccentricity and the function is the complete elliptic
integral of the second kind,

The circumference of the ellipse may be evaluated in terms of using Gauss's arithmetic-geometric mean;[7] this is a
quadratically converging iterative method.[8]

The exact infinite series is:

where is the double factorial. Unfortunately, this series converges rather slowly; however, by expanding in terms of
Ivory[9] and Bessel[10] derived an expression that converges much more rapidly,

Ramanujan gives two good approximations for the circumference in §16 of "Modular Equations and Approximations to ";[11] they
are

and

The errors in these approximations, which were obtained empirically, are of order and respectively.

More generally, the arc length of a portion of the circumference, as a function of the angle subtended, is given by an incomplete
elliptic integral.

The inverse function, the angle subtended as a function of the arc length, is given by the elliptic functions.

Some lower and upper bounds on the circumference of the canonical ellipse with are[12]

Here the upper bound is the circumference of a circumscribed concentric circle passing through the endpoints of the ellipse's
major axis, and the lower bound is the perimeter of an inscribed rhombus with vertices at the endpoints of the major
and the minor axes.

Curvature

The curvature is given by radius of curvature at point :

Radius of curvature at the two vertices and the centers of curvature:

Radius of curvature at the two co-vertices and the centers of curvature:

Ellipse as quadric

General ellipse
In analytic geometry, the ellipse is defined as a quadric: the set of points of the Cartesian plane that, in non-degenerate
cases, satisfy the implicit equation[13][14]

provided

To distinguish the degenerate cases from the non-degenerate case, let ∆ be the determinant

that is,

Then the ellipse is a non-degenerate real ellipse if and only if C∆ < 0. If C∆ > 0, we have an imaginary ellipse, and if ∆ = 0, we have
a point ellipse.[15]:p.63

The general equation's coefficients can be obtained from known semi-major axis , semi-minor axis , center coordinates
and rotation angle using the following formulae:

These expressions can be derived from the canonical equation (see next section) by substituting the coordinates with expressions
for rotation and translation of the coordinate system:

Canonical form
Let . Through change of coordinates (a rotation of axes and a translation of axes) the general ellipse can be described by the
canonical implicit equation
Here are the point coordinates in the canonical system, whose origin is the center of the ellipse, whose -axis is the
unit vector coinciding with the major axis, and whose -axis is the perpendicular vector coinciding with the
minor axis. That is, and .

In this system, the center is the origin and the foci are and for eccentricity e.

Any ellipse can be obtained by rotation and translation of a canonical ellipse with the proper semi-diameters. The expression of an
ellipse centered at is

Moreover, any canonical ellipse can be obtained by scaling the unit circle of , defined by the equation

by factors a and b along the two axes.

For an ellipse in canonical form, we have

The distances from a point on the ellipse to the left and right foci are and , respectively.

The canonical form coefficients can be obtained from the general form coefficients using the following equations:

where is the angle from the positive horizontal axis to the ellipse's major axis.

Polar forms

Polar form relative to center

In polar coordinates, with the origin at the center of the ellipse and with the angular
coordinate measured from the major axis, the ellipse's equation is[15]:p. 75

Polar form relative to focus Polar coordinates centered at the

If instead we use polar coordinates with the origin at one focus, with the angular center
coordinate still measured from the major axis, the ellipse's equation is
where the sign in the denominator is negative if the reference direction points
towards the center (as illustrated on the right), and positive if that direction points away
from the center.

In the slightly more general case of an ellipse with one focus at the origin and the other
Polar coordinates centered at focus
focus at angular coordinate , the polar form is

The angle in these formulas is called the true anomaly of the point. The numerator of these formulas is the semi-
latus rectum of the ellipse, usually denoted . It is the distance from a focus of the ellipse to the ellipse itself, measured along a
line perpendicular to the major axis.

Ellipse as hypotrochoid
The ellipse is a special case of the hypotrochoid when R = 2r, as shown in the adjacent
image. The special case of a moving circle with radius inside a circle with radius
is called a Tusi couple.

Ellipses as plane sections of quadrics

Ellipses appear as plane sections of the following quadrics:

Ellipsoid
Elliptic cone
Elliptic cylinder
Hyperboloid of one sheet
Hyperboloid of two sheets An ellipse (in red) as a special case
of the hypotrochoid with R = 2r

Ellipsoid Elliptic cone Elliptic cylinder

Hyperboloid of one Hyperboloid of two

sheet sheets
Applications

Physics

Elliptical reflectors and acoustics

If the water's surface is disturbed at one focus of an elliptical water tank, the circular waves of that disturbance, after reflecting off
the walls, converge simultaneously to a single point: the second focus. This is a consequence of the total travel length being the
same along any wall-bouncing path between the two foci.

Similarly, if a light source is placed at one focus of an elliptic mirror, all light rays on the plane of the ellipse are reflected to the
second focus. Since no other smooth curve has such a property, it can be used as an alternative definition of an ellipse. (In the
special case of a circle with a source at its center all light would be reflected back to the center.) If the ellipse is rotated along its
major axis to produce an ellipsoidal mirror (specifically, a prolate spheroid), this property holds for all rays out of the source.
Alternatively, a cylindrical mirror with elliptical cross-section can be used to focus light from a linear fluorescent lamp along a line
of the paper; such mirrors are used in some document scanners.

Sound waves are reflected in a similar way, so in a large elliptical room a person standing at one focus can hear a person standing at
the other focus remarkably well. The effect is even more evident under a vaulted roof shaped as a section of a prolate spheroid.
Such a room is called a whisper chamber. The same effect can be demonstrated with two reflectors shaped like the end caps of such
a spheroid, placed facing each other at the proper distance. Examples are the National Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol
(where John Quincy Adams is said to have used this property for eavesdropping on political matters); the Mormon Tabernacle at
Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah; at an exhibit on sound at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago; in front of the
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Foellinger Auditorium; and also at a side chamber of the Palace of Charles V, in the
Alhambra.

Planetary orbits
In the 17th century, Johannes Kepler discovered that the orbits along which the planets travel around the Sun are ellipses with the
Sun [approximately] at one focus, in his first law of planetary motion. Later, Isaac Newton explained this as a corollary of his law of
universal gravitation.

More generally, in the gravitational two-body problem, if the two bodies are bound to each other (that is, the total energy is
negative), their orbits are similar ellipses with the common barycenter being one of the foci of each ellipse. The other focus of either
ellipse has no known physical significance. The orbit of either body in the reference frame of the other is also an ellipse, with the
other body at the same focus.

Keplerian elliptical orbits are the result of any radially directed attraction force whose strength is inversely proportional to the
square of the distance. Thus, in principle, the motion of two oppositely charged particles in empty space would also be an ellipse.
(However, this conclusion ignores losses due to electromagnetic radiation and quantum effects, which become significant when the
particles are moving at high speed.)

For elliptical orbits, useful relations involving the eccentricity are:

where

is the radius at apoapsis (the farthest distance)

is the radius at periapsis (the closest distance)
is the length of the semi-major axis
Also, in terms of and , the semi-major axis is their arithmetic mean, the semi-minor axis is their geometric mean, and the
semi-latus rectum is their harmonic mean. In other words,

Harmonic oscillators
The general solution for a harmonic oscillator in two or more dimensions is also an ellipse. Such is the case, for instance, of a long
pendulum that is free to move in two dimensions; of a mass attached to a fixed point by a perfectly elastic spring; or of any object
that moves under influence of an attractive force that is directly proportional to its distance from a fixed attractor. Unlike Keplerian
orbits, however, these "harmonic orbits" have the center of attraction at the geometric center of the ellipse, and have fairly simple
equations of motion.

Phase visualization
In electronics, the relative phase of two sinusoidal signals can be compared by feeding them to the vertical and horizontal inputs of
an oscilloscope. If the display is an ellipse, rather than a straight line, the two signals are out of phase.

Elliptical gears
Two non-circular gears with the same elliptical outline, each pivoting around one focus and positioned at the proper angle, turn
smoothly while maintaining contact at all times. Alternatively, they can be connected by a link chain or timing belt, or in the case of
a bicycle the main chainring may be elliptical, or an ovoid similar to an ellipse in form. Such elliptical gears may be used in
mechanical equipment to produce variable angular speed or torque from a constant rotation of the driving axle, or in the case of a
bicycle to allow a varying crank rotation speed with inversely varying mechanical advantage.

Elliptical bicycle gears make it easier for the chain to slide off the cog when changing gears.[16]

An example gear application would be a device that winds thread onto a conical bobbin on a spinning machine. The bobbin would
need to wind faster when the thread is near the apex than when it is near the base.[17]

Optics

In a material that is optically anisotropic (birefringent), the refractive index depends on the direction of the light. The
dependency can be described by an index ellipsoid. (If the material is optically isotropic, this ellipsoid is a sphere.)
In lamp-pumped solid-state lasers, elliptical cylinder-shaped reflectors have been used to direct light from the pump lamp
(coaxial with one ellipse focal axis) to the active medium rod (coaxial with the second focal axis).[18]
In laser-plasma produced EUV light sources used in microchip lithography, EUV light is generated by plasma positioned in the
primary focus of an ellipsoid mirror and is collected in the secondary focus at the input of the lithography machine.[19]

Statistics and finance

In statistics, a bivariate random vector (X, Y) is jointly elliptically distributed if its iso-density contours—loci of equal values of the
density function—are ellipses. The concept extends to an arbitrary number of elements of the random vector, in which case in
general the iso-density contours are ellipsoids. A special case is the multivariate normal distribution. The elliptical distributions are
important in finance because if rates of return on assets are jointly elliptically distributed then all portfolios can be characterized
completely by their mean and variance—that is, any two portfolios with identical mean and variance of portfolio return have
identical distributions of portfolio return.[20][21]

Computer graphics
Drawing an ellipse as a graphics primitive is common in standard display libraries, such as the MacIntosh QuickDraw API, and
Direct2D on Windows. Jack Bresenham at IBM is most famous for the invention of 2D drawing primitives, including line and circle
drawing, using only fast integer operations such as addition and branch on carry bit. M. L. V. Pitteway extended Bresenham's
algorithm for lines to conics in 1967.[22] Another efficient generalization to draw ellipses was invented in 1984 by Jerry Van
Aken.[23]

In 1970 Danny Cohen presented at the "Computer Graphics 1970" conference in England a linear algorithm for drawing ellipses
and circles. In 1971, L. B. Smith published similar algorithms for all conic sections and proved them to have good properties.[24]
These algorithms need only a few multiplications and additions to calculate each vector.

It is beneficial to use a parametric formulation in computer graphics because the density of points is greatest where there is the
most curvature. Thus, the change in slope between each successive point is small, reducing the apparent "jaggedness" of the
approximation.

Drawing with Bézier paths

Composite Bézier curves may also be used to draw an ellipse to sufficient accuracy, since any ellipse may be construed as an affine
transformation of a circle. The spline methods used to draw a circle may be used to draw an ellipse, since the constituent Bézier
curves behave appropriately under such transformations.

Optimization theory
It is sometimes useful to find the minimum bounding ellipse on a set of points. The ellipsoid method is quite useful for attacking
this problem.

See also
Apollonius of Perga, the classical authority
Cartesian oval, a generalization of the ellipse
Circumconic and inconic
Conic section
Ellipse fitting
Ellipsoid, a higher dimensional analog of an ellipse
Elliptic coordinates, an orthogonal coordinate system based on families of ellipses and hyperbolae
Elliptic partial differential equation
Elliptical distribution, in statistics
Geodesics on an ellipsoid
Great ellipse
Hyperbola
Kepler's laws of planetary motion
Matrix representation of conic sections
n-ellipse, a generalization of the ellipse for n foci
Oval
Parabola
Rytz’s construction, a method for finding the ellipse axes from conjugate diameters or a parallelogram
Spheroid, the ellipsoid obtained by rotating an ellipse about its major or minor axis
Stadium (geometry), a two-dimensional geometric shape constructed of a rectangle with semicircles at a pair of opposite sides
Steiner circumellipse, the unique ellipse circumscribing a triangle and sharing its centroid
Steiner inellipse, the unique ellipse inscribed in a triangle with tangencies at the sides' midpoints
Superellipse, a generalization of an ellipse that can look more rectangular or more "pointy"
True, eccentric, and mean anomaly

Notes
1. Apostol, Tom M.; Mnatsakanian, Mamikon A. (2012), New Horizons in Geometry, The Dolciani Mathematical Expositions #47,
The Mathematical Association of America, p. 251, ISBN 978-0-88385-354-2
 2. The German term for this circle is Leitkreis which can be translated as "Director circle", but that term has a different meaning in
the English literature (see Director circle).
3. K. Strubecker: Vorlesungen über Darstellende Geometrie, GÖTTINGEN, VANDENHOECK & RUPRECHT, 1967, p. 26
4. J. van Mannen: Seventeenth century instruments for drawing conic sections. In: The Mathematical Gazette. Vol. 76, 1992, p.
222–230.
5. E. Hartmann: Lecture Note 'Planar Circle Geometries', an Introduction to Möbius-, Laguerre- and Minkowski Planes, p. 55 (ht
tp://www.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de/~ehartmann/circlegeom.pdf)
6. W. Benz, Vorlesungen über Geomerie der Algebren, Springer (1973)
7. Carlson, B. C. (2010), "Elliptic Integrals" (http://dlmf.nist.gov/19.8.E6), in Olver, Frank W. J.; Lozier, Daniel M.; Boisvert, Ronald
F.; Clark, Charles W., NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0521192255,
MR 2723248 (https://www.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=2723248)
8. Python code for the circumference of an ellipse in terms of the complete elliptic integral of the second kind (http://paulbourke.n
et/geometry/ellipsecirc/python.code), retrieved 2013-12-28
9. Ivory, J. (1798). "A new series for the rectification of the ellipsis" (https://books.google.com/books?id=FaUaqZZYYPAC&pg=PA
177). Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 4: 177–190. doi:10.1017/s0080456800030817 (https://doi.org/10.1017%
2Fs0080456800030817).
10. Bessel, F. W. (2010). "The calculation of longitude and latitude from geodesic measurements (1825)". Astron. Nachr. 331 (8):
852–861. arXiv:0908.1824 (https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1824). Bibcode:2010AN....331..852K (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/201
0AN....331..852K). doi:10.1002/asna.201011352 (https://doi.org/10.1002%2Fasna.201011352). Englisch translation of Bessel,
F. W. (1825). "Über die Berechnung der geographischen Längen und Breiten aus geodätischen Vermesssungen". Astron.
Nachr. 4: 241–254. arXiv:0908.1823 (https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1823). Bibcode:1825AN......4..241B (http://adsabs.harvard.ed
u/abs/1825AN......4..241B). doi:10.1002/asna.18260041601 (https://doi.org/10.1002%2Fasna.18260041601).
11. Ramanujan, Srinivasa, (1914). "Modular Equations and Approximations to π" (https://books.google.com/books?id=oSioAM4w
ORMC&pg=PA39). Quart. J. Pure App. Math. 45: 350–372.
12. Jameson, G.J.O. (2014). "Inequalities for the perimeter of an ellipse". Mathematical Gazette. 98: 227–234.
doi:10.1017/S002555720000125X (https://doi.org/10.1017%2FS002555720000125X).
13. Larson, Ron; Hostetler, Robert P.; Falvo, David C. (2006). "Chapter 10" (https://books.google.com/books?id=yMdHnyerji8C&pg
=PA767). Precalculus with Limits (https://books.google.com/books?id=yMdHnyerji8C). Cengage Learning. p. 767. ISBN 0-618-
66089-5.
14. Young, Cynthia Y. (2010). "Chapter 9" (https://books.google.com/books?id=9HRLAn326zEC&pg=PA831). Precalculus (https://
books.google.com/books?id=9HRLAn326zEC). John Wiley and Sons. p. 831. ISBN 0-471-75684-9.
15. Lawrence, J. Dennis, A Catalog of Special Plane Curves, Dover Publ., 1972.
16. David Drew. "Elliptical Gears". [1] (http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/emt668/EMAT6680.2003.fall/Drew/Emat6890/Elliptical%20Gears.
htm)
17. Grant, George B. (1906). A treatise on gear wheels (https://books.google.com/books?id=fPoOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA72).
Philadelphia Gear Works. p. 72.
18. Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology - lamp-pumped lasers, arc lamps, flash lamps, high-power, Nd:YAG laser (htt
p://www.rp-photonics.com/lamp_pumped_lasers.html)
19. "Archived copy" (https://web.archive.org/web/20130517100847/http://www.cymer.com/plasma_chamber_detail). Archived from
the original (http://www.cymer.com/plasma_chamber_detail/) on 2013-05-17. Retrieved 2013-06-20.
20. Chamberlain, G. (February 1983). "A characterization of the distributions that imply mean—Variance utility functions" (http://ww
w.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022053183901291). Journal of Economic Theory. 29 (1): 185–201. doi:10.1016/0022-
0531(83)90129-1 (https://doi.org/10.1016%2F0022-0531%2883%2990129-1).
21. Owen, J.; Rabinovitch, R. (June 1983). "On the class of elliptical distributions and their applications to the theory of portfolio
choice". Journal of Finance. 38: 745–752. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6261.1983.tb02499.x (https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1540-6261.198
3.tb02499.x). JSTOR 2328079 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2328079).
22. Pitteway, M.L.V. (1967). "Algorithm for drawing ellipses or hyperbolae with a digital plotter" (http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/con
tent/10/3/282.abstract). The Computer Journal. 10 (3): 282–9. doi:10.1093/comjnl/10.3.282 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fcomjn
l%2F10.3.282).
23. Van Aken, J.R. (September 1984). "An Efficient Ellipse-Drawing Algorithm". IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. 4 (9):
24–35. doi:10.1109/MCG.1984.275994 (https://doi.org/10.1109%2FMCG.1984.275994).
24. Smith, L.B. (1971). "Drawing ellipses, hyperbolae or parabolae with a fixed number of points" (http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/
content/14/1/81.short). The Computer Journal. 14 (1): 81–86. doi:10.1093/comjnl/14.1.81 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fcomjnl%
2F14.1.81).

References
 Besant, W.H. (1907). "Chapter III. The Ellipse". Conic Sections (https://books.google.com/books?id=TRJLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA5
0). London: George Bell and Sons. p. 50.
Coxeter, H.S.M. (1969). Introduction to Geometry (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley. pp. 115–9.
Meserve, Bruce E. (1983) [1959], Fundamental Concepts of Geometry, Dover, ISBN 0-486-63415-9
Miller, Charles D.; Lial, Margaret L.; Schneider, David I. (1990). Fundamentals of College Algebra (3rd ed.). Scott
Foresman/Little. p. 381. ISBN 0-673-38638-4.

External links
Quotations related to Ellipse at Wikiquote
Media related to Ellipses at Wikimedia Commons
Ellipse (mathematics) (https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/185064) at Encyclopædia Britannica
ellipse (http://planetmath.org/ellipse) at PlanetMath.org.
Weisstein, Eric W. "Ellipse" (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Ellipse.html). MathWorld.
Weisstein, Eric W. "Ellipse as special case of hypotrochoid" (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hypotrochoid.html). MathWorld.
Apollonius' Derivation of the Ellipse (https://web.archive.org/web/20070715063900/http://mathdl.maa.org/convergence/1/?pa=c
ontent&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=196&bodyId=203) at Convergence
The Shape and History of The Ellipse in Washington, D.C. (http://faculty.evansville.edu/ck6/ellipse.pdf) by Clark Kimberling
Ellipse circumference calculator (http://www.fxsolver.com/solve/share/ON58ARMtP65D1khWt1uwUA==/)
Collection of animated ellipse demonstrations (http://www.mathopenref.com/tocs/ellipsetoc.html)
Ivanov, A.B. (2001) [1994], "Ellipse" (https://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php?title=Ellipse&oldid=11394), in Hazewinkel,
Michiel, Encyclopedia of Mathematics, Springer Science+Business Media B.V. / Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 978-1-
55608-010-4
Trammel according Frans van Schooten (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:01-Ellipsenzirkel-van_Schooten-3.svg#Sum
mary)

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Parabola
In mathematics, a parabola is a plane curve which is mirror-symmetrical and is approximately U-shaped. It fits any of several
superficially different mathematical descriptions, which can all be proved to define exactly the same curves.

One description of a parabola involves a point (the focus) and a line (the
directrix). The focus does not lie on the directrix. The parabola is the locus
of points in that plane that are equidistant from both the directrix and the
focus. Another description of a parabola is as a conic section, created from
the intersection of a right circular conical surface and a plane which is
parallel to another plane that is tangential to the conical surface.[a] A third
description is algebraic. The graph of a quadratic function (for example,
y = x2) is a parabola, and, conversely, a parabola whose axis of symmetry
is parallel to the y-axis is the graph of a quadratic function.

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 on the parabola that intersects the axis of
Part of a parabola (blue), with various features
symmetry is called the "vertex", and is the point where the parabola is
(other colours). The complete parabola has no
most sharply curved. The distance between the vertex and the focus,
endpoints. In this orientation, it extends infinitely
measured along the axis of symmetry, is the "focal length". The "latus to the left, right, and upward.
rectum" is the chord of the parabola which is parallel to the directrix and
passes through the focus. Parabolas can open up, down, left, right, or in
some other arbitrary direction. Any parabola can be repositioned and rescaled to fit exactly on any other parabola—that is, all
parabolas are geometrically similar.

Parabolas have the property that, if they are made of material that reflects light, then light which travels parallel to the axis of
symmetry of a parabola and strikes its concave side is reflected to its focus, regardless of where on the parabola the reflection
occurs. Conversely, light that originates from a point source at the focus is reflected into a parallel ("collimated") beam, leaving the
parabola parallel to the axis of symmetry. The same effects occur with sound and other forms of energy. This reflective property is
the basis of many practical uses of parabolas.

The parabola has many important applications, from a parabolic antenna or parabolic microphone to automobile headlight
reflectors to the design of ballistic missiles. They are frequently used in physics, engineering, and many other areas.

History
The earliest known work on conic sections was by Menaechmus in the fourth century
BC. He discovered a way to solve the problem of doubling the cube using parabolas.
(The solution, however, does not meet the requirements of compass-and-straightedge
construction.) The area enclosed by a parabola and a line segment, the so-called
"parabola segment", was computed by Archimedes via the method of exhaustion in the
third century BC, in his The Quadrature of the Parabola. 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
The parabola is a member of the
Apollonius had proved.[1] The focus–directrix property of the parabola and other conic family of conic sections.
sections is due to Pappus.

Galileo showed that the path of a projectile follows a parabola, a consequence of uniform acceleration due to gravity.
The idea that a parabolic reflector could produce an image was already well known before the
invention of the reflecting telescope.[2] Designs were proposed in the early to mid seventeenth
century by many mathematicians including René Descartes, Marin Mersenne,[3] and James
Gregory.[4] When Isaac Newton built the first reflecting telescope in 1668, he skipped using a
parabolic mirror because of the difficulty of fabrication, opting for a spherical mirror. Parabolic
mirrors are used in most modern reflecting telescopes and in satellite dishes and radar
receivers.[5]

Parabolic compass designed

by Leonardo da Vinci

Definition as a locus of points

A parabola can be defined geometrically as a set of points (locus of points) in the Euclidean plane:

A parabola is a set of points, such that for any point of the set the distance to a fixed point , the focus, is equal to the
distance to a fixed line , the directrix:

The midpoint of the perpendicular from the focus onto the directrix is called vertex and the line the axis of symmetry of
the parabola.

In a cartesian coordinate system

Axis of symmetry parallel to the y-axis

If one introduces cartesian coordinates, such that and the directrix
has the equation one obtains for a point from the
equation . Solving for yields

The parabola is U-shaped (opening to the top).

The horizontal chord through the focus (see picture) is called the latus rectum; one half Parabola: Definition, p: semi-latus
of it is the semi-latus rectum. The latus rectum is parallel to the directrix. The semi- rectum

latus rectum is designated by the letter . From the picture one obtains

The latus rectum is defined similarly for the other two conics, namely the ellipse and the
hyperbola, respectively. 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. For a parabola, the semi-latus rectum, ,
is the distance of the focus from the directrix. Using the parameter , the equation of the
parabola can be rewritten as

. Parabola: axis parallel to y-axis

More generally, if the vertex is , the focus and the
directrix , one obtains the equation

Remark:

1. In the case of the parabola has a downwards opening.

2. The presumption that the axis is parallel to the y-axis allows one to consider a
parabola as the graph of a polynomial of degree 2, and vice versa: the graph of an
arbitrary polynomial of degree 2 is a parabola (see next section). Parabola: general case
3. If one exchanges and , one obtains equations of the form . These
parabolas open to the left (if ) or to the right (if ).

General case
If the focus is and the directrix one obtains the equation

(The left side of the equation uses the Hesse normal form of a line to calculate the distance .)

For a parametric equation of a parabola in general position see § As the affine image of the unit parabola.

The implicit equation of a parabola is defined by an irreducible polynomial of degree two

such that or, equivalently, such that is the square of a linear polynomial.

As a graph of a function
The previous section shows: any parabola with the origin as vertex and the y-axis as axis
of symmetry can be considered as the graph of a function

For the parabolas are opening to the top and for opening to the bottom
(see picture). From the section above one obtains:

The focus is ,

the focal length , the semi-latus rectum is ,

the vertex is ,

the directrix has the equation ,

the tangent at point has the equation ,

Parabolas
For the parabola is the unit parabola with equation . Its focus is ,
the semi-latus rectum and the directrix has the equation .

The general function of degree 2 is

.
Completing the square yields

which is the equation of a parabola with

the axis (parallel to the y-axis),

the focal length , the semi-latus rectum ,

the vertex ,

the focus ,

the directrix ,

the point of the parabola intersecting the y-axis has coordinates ,

the tangent at a point on the y-axis has the equation .

Similarity to the unit parabola

Two objects in the Euclidean plane are similar if one can be transformed to the other by
a similarity, that is, an arbitrary composition of rigid motions (translations and
rotations) and uniform scalings.

A parabola with vertex can be transformed by the translation

to one with the origin as vertex. A suitable rotation around
the origin can then transform the parabola to one that has the y-axis as axis of
symmetry. Hence the parabola can be transformed by a rigid motion to a parabola
with an equation . Such a parabola can then be transformed by the
uniform scaling into the unit parabola with equation . Thus, When the parabola is
uniformly scaled by factor 2, the
any parabola can be mapped to the unit parabola by a similarity.[6]
result is the parabola
A synthetic approach, using similar triangles, can also be used to establish this result.[7]

The general result is that two conic sections (necessarily of the same type) are similar if and only if they have the same
eccentricity.[6] Thus, only circles (all having eccentricity 0) share this property with parabolas (all having eccentricity 1), while
general ellipses and hyperbolas do not.

There are other simple affine transformations that map the parabola onto the unit parabola, such as . But
this mapping is not a similarity, and only shows that all parabolas are affinely equivalent (see § As the affine image of the unit
parabola).

As a special conic section

The pencil of conic sections with the x-axis as axis of symmetry, one vertex at the origin (0,0) and the same semi-latus rectum can
be represented by the equation

with the eccentricity.

For the conic is a circle (osculating circle of the pencil),

for an ellipse,
for the parabola with equation and
 for a hyperbola (see picture).

In polar coordinates
If p > 0, the parabola with equation (opening to the right) has the polar
coordinate representation:

( .)

Its vertex is and its focus is .

If one shifts the origin into the focus, i.e., , one obtains the equation
Pencil of conics with a common
vertex

Remark 1: Inverting this polar form shows: a parabola is the inverse of a cardioid.

Remark 2: The second polar form is a special case of a pencil of conics with focus
(see picture):

, ( : eccentricity).

Conic section and quadratic form

Diagram, description, and definitions

Pencil of conics with a common
The diagram represents a cone with its axis vertical.[b] The point A is its apex. An focus
inclined cross-section of the cone, shown in pink, is inclined from the vertical by the
same angle, θ, as the side of the cone. According to the definition of a parabola as a
conic section, the boundary of this pink cross-section, EPD, is a parabola.

A horizontal cross-section of the cone passes through the vertex, P, of the parabola.
This cross-section is circular, but appears elliptical when viewed obliquely, as is
shown in the diagram. Its centre is V, and PK is a diameter. We will call its radius r.

Another horizontal, circular cross-section of the cone is farther from the apex, A, than
the one just described. It has a chord DE, which joins the points where the parabola
intersects the circle. Another chord, BC, is the perpendicular bisector of DE, and is
consequently a diameter of the circle. These two chords and the parabola's axis of
symmetry, PM, all intersect at the point M.

All the labelled points, except D and E, are coplanar. They are in the plane of
symmetry of the whole figure. This includes the point F, which is not mentioned
above. It is defined and discussed below, in the paragraph "Position of the focus".
Cone with cross-sections (To enlarge,
Let us call the length of DM and of EM x, and the length of PM y. click on diagram. To shrink, go to
previous page.)

Derivation of quadratic equation

The lengths of BM and CM are:

(triangle BPM is isosceles.)

 (PMCK is a parallelogram.)

Using the intersecting chords theorem on the chords BC and DE, we get:

Substituting:

Rearranging:

For any given cone and parabola, r and θ are constants, but x and y are variables which depend on the arbitrary height at which the
horizontal cross-section BECD is made. This last equation shows the relationship between these variables. They can be interpreted
as Cartesian coordinates of the points D and E, in a system in the pink plane with P as its origin. Since x is squared in the equation,
the fact that D and E are on opposite sides of the y-axis is unimportant. If the horizontal cross-section moves up or down, toward or
away from the apex of the cone, D and E move along the parabola, always maintaining the relationship between x and y shown in
the equation. The parabolic curve is therefore the locus of points where the equation is satisfied, which makes it a Cartesian graph
of the quadratic function in the equation.

This discussion started from the definition of a parabola as a conic section, but it has now led to a description as a graph of a
quadratic function. This shows that these two descriptions are equivalent. They both define curves of exactly the same shape.

Focal length
It is proved in a preceding section that if a parabola has its vertex at the origin, and if it opens in the positive y direction, then its
x2
equation is y = , where f is its focal length.[c] Comparing this with the last equation above shows that the focal length of the
4f
parabola in the cone is r sin θ.

Position of the focus

In the diagram above, the point V is the foot of the perpendicular from the vertex of the parabola to the axis of the cone. The
point F is the foot of the perpendicular from the point V to the plane of the parabola.[d] By symmetry, F is on the axis
of symmetry of the parabola. Angle VPF is complementary to θ, and angle PVF is complementary to angle VPF, therefore angle PVF
is θ. Since the length of PV is r, the distance of F from the vertex of the parabola is r sin θ. It is shown above that this distance
equals the focal length of the parabola, which is the distance from the vertex to the focus. The focus and the point F are therefore
equally distant from the vertex, along the same line, which implies that they are the same point. Therefore, the point F, defined
above, is the focus of the parabola.

Alternative proof with Dandelin spheres

An alternative proof can be done using Dandelin spheres. It works without calculation and uses elementary geometric
considerations, only. (see German article on Parabel)

Proof of the reflective property

The reflective property states that, if a parabola can reflect light, then light which enters it travelling parallel to the axis of symmetry
is reflected toward the focus. This is derived from the wave nature of light in the paragraph "description of final diagram", which
describes a diagram just above it, at the end of this article. This derivation is valid, but may not be satisfying to readers who would
prefer a mathematical approach. In the following proof, the fact that every point on the parabola is equidistant from the focus and
from the directrix is taken as axiomatic.
Consider the parabola y = x2. Since all parabolas are similar, this simple case represents
all others. The right-hand side of the diagram shows part of this parabola.

Construction and definitions

The point E is an arbitrary point on the parabola, with coordinates (x, x2). The focus is
F, the vertex is A (the origin), and the line FA (the y-axis) is the axis of symmetry. The
line EC is parallel to the axis of symmetry, and intersects the x-axis at D. The point C is
located on the directrix (which is not shown, to minimize clutter). The point B is the
midpoint of the line segment FC.

Deductions
Reflective property of a parabola
Measured along the axis of symmetry, the vertex, A, is equidistant from the focus, F, and
from the directrix. According to the Intercept theorem, since C is on the directrix, the y-
coordinates of F and C are equal in absolute value and opposite in sign. B is the midpoint of FC, so its y-coordinate is zero, so it lies
x
on the x-axis. Its x-coordinate is half that of E, D, and C, i.e., . The slope of the line BE is the quotient of the lengths of ED and BD,
2
x2
which is , which comes to 2x. But 2x is also the slope (first derivative) of the parabola at E. Therefore, the line BE is the tangent
x/2
to the parabola at E.

The distances EF and EC are equal because E is on the parabola, F is the focus and C is on the directrix. Therefore, since B is the
midpoint of FC, triangles △FEB and △CEB are congruent (three sides), which implies that the angles marked α are congruent. (The
angle above E is vertically opposite angle ∠BEC.) This means that a ray of light which enters the parabola and arrives at E travelling
parallel to the axis of symmetry will be reflected by the line BE so it travels along the line EF, as shown in red in the diagram
(assuming that the lines can somehow reflect light). Since BE is the tangent to the parabola at E, the same reflection will be done by
an infinitesimal arc of the parabola at E. Therefore, light that enters the parabola and arrives at E travelling parallel to the axis of
symmetry of the parabola is reflected by the parabola toward its focus.

The point E has no special characteristics. This conclusion about reflected light applies to all points on the parabola, as is shown on
the left side of the diagram. This is the reflective property.

Other consequences
There are other theorems that can be deduced simply from the above argument.

Tangent bisection property

The above proof and the accompanying diagram show that the tangent BE bisects the angle ∠FEC. In other words, the tangent to
the parabola at any point bisects the angle between the lines joining the point to the focus, and perpendicularly to the directrix.

Intersection of a tangent and perpendicular from focus

Since triangles △ FBE and △ CBE are congruent, FB is perpendicular to the tangent BE.
Since B is on the x-axis, which is the tangent to the parabola at its vertex, it follows that the
point of intersection between any tangent to a parabola and the perpendicular from the
focus to that tangent lies on the line that is tangential to the parabola at its vertex. See
animated diagram [8] and pedal curve.

Reflection of light striking the convex side

If light travels along the line CE, it moves parallel to the axis of symmetry and strikes the Perpendicular from focus to
convex side of the parabola at E. It is clear from the above diagram that this light will be tangent
reflected directly away from the focus, along an extension of the segment FE.
Alternative proofs
The above proofs of the reflective and tangent bisection properties use a line of calculus.
For readers who are not comfortable with calculus, the following alternative is presented.

In this diagram, F is the focus of the parabola, and T and U lie on its directrix. P is an
arbitrary point on the parabola. PT is perpendicular to the directrix, and the line MP bisects
angle ∠FPT. Q is another point on the parabola, with QU perpendicular to the directrix. We
know that FP = PT and FQ = QU. Clearly, QT > QU, so QT > FQ. All points on the bisector
MP are equidistant from F and T, but Q is closer to F than to T. This means that Q is to the
left of MP, i.e., on the same side of it as the focus. The same would be true if Q were located Parabola and tangent
anywhere else on the parabola (except at the point P), so the entire parabola, except the
point P, is on the focus side of MP. Therefore, MP is the tangent to the parabola at P. Since
it bisects the angle ∠FPT, this proves the tangent bisection property.

The logic of the last paragraph can be applied to modify the above proof of the reflective property. It effectively proves the line BE
to be the tangent to the parabola at E if the angles α are equal. The reflective property follows as shown previously.

Properties related to Pascal's theorem

A parabola can be considered as the affine part of a non degenerated projective conic with a point on the line of infinity ,
which is the tangent at . The 5-,4- and 3- point degenerations of Pascal's theorem are properties of a conic dealing with at least
one tangent. If one considers this tangent as the line at infinity and its point of contact as the point at infinity of the y-axis, one
obtains three statements for a parabola.

The following properties of a parabola deal only with terms connect, intersect, parallel, which are invariants of similarities. So, it is
sufficient to prove any property for the unit parabola with equation .

4-points-property
Any parabola can be described in a suitable coordinate system by an equation .

Let be four points of

the parabola and the intersection of the secant line with the line
and let be the intersection of the secant line with the line
(see picture). Then the secant line is parallel to line .

(The lines and are parallel to the axis of the

parabola.)

Proof: straightforward calculation for the unit parabola .

4-points-property of a parabola
Application: The 4-points-property of a parabola can be used for the construction of
point , while and are given.

Remark: the 4-points-property of a parabola is an affine version of the 5-point-degeneration of Pascal's theorem.

3-points-1-tangent-property
Let be three points of the parabola with equation and the
intersection of the secant line with the line and the intersection of the secant line with the line
(see picture), then the tangent at point is parallel to the line .

(The lines and are parallel to the axis of the parabola.)

Proof: can be performed for the unit parabola . A short calculation shows: line has slope which is the slope of the
tangent at point .
Application: The 3-points-1-tangent-property of a parabola can be used for the
construction of the tangent at point , while are given.

Remark: The 3-points-1-tangent-property of a parabola is an affine version of the 4-

point-degeneration of Pascal's theorem.

2-points-2-tangents-property
Let be two points of the parabola with equation
and the intersection of the tangent at point with the line and
the intersection of the tangent at point with the line (see picture)
then the secant is parallel to the line .

3-points-1-tangent-property
(The lines and are parallel to the axis of the
parabola.)

Proof: straight forward calculation for the unit parabola .

Application: The 2-points-2-tangents-property can be used for the construction of the

tangent of a parabola at point while and the tangent at are given.

Remark 1: The 2-points-2-tangents-property of a parabola is an affine version of the 3-

point-degeneration of Pascal's theorem.

Remark 2: The 2-points-2-tangents-property should not be confused with the following

property of a parabola, which deals with 2 points and 2 tangents, too, but is not related
to Pascal's theorem.

Axis-direction
2-points-2-tangents-property
The statements above presume the knowledge of the axis-direction of the parabola, in
order to construct the points . The following property determines the points
by two given points and their tangents only, and the result is: the line is
parallel to the axis of the parabola.

Let

1. be two points of the parabola and

be their tangents;
2. be the intersection of the tangents ,
3. be the intersection of the parallel line to through with the parallel line
to through (see picture).
Then the line is parallel to the axis of the parabola and has the equation

Proof: can be done (like the properties above) for the unit parabola . Construction of the axis-direction

Application: This property can be used to determine the direction of the axis of a
parabola, if two points and their tangents are given. An alternative way is to determine the midpoints of two parallel chords, see
section on parallel chords.

Remark: This property is an affine version of the theorem of two perspective triangles of a non-degenerate conic.[9]

Steiner generation

Parabola
Steiner established the following procedure for the construction of a non-degenerate conic (see Steiner conic):
 Given two pencils of lines at two points (all lines containing
and respectively) and a projective but not perspective mapping of onto
. Then the intersection points of corresponding lines form a non-degenerate
projective conic section.
This procedure can be used for a simple construction of points on the parabola :

Consider the pencil at the vertex and the set of lines , which are parallel
to the y-axis.

1. Let be a point on the parabola and , .

Steiner generation of a parabola
2. The line segment is divided into n equally spaced segments and this division is
projected (in the direction ) onto the line segment (see figure). This
projection gives rise to a projective mapping from pencil onto the pencil .
3. The intersection of the line and the i-th parallel to the y-axis is a point on the parabola.

Proof: straightforward calculation.

Remark: Steiner's generation is also available for ellipses and hyperbolas.

Dual parabola
A dual parabola consists of the set of tangents of an
ordinary parabola.
The Steiner generation of a conic can be applied to the
generation of a dual conic by changing the meanings of
points and lines:

Let be given two point sets on two lines and a

projective but not perspective mapping between
these point sets, then the connecting lines of
corresponding points form a non degenerate dual
conic. Dual parabola and Bezier curve of degree 2
In order to generate elements of a dual parabola, one (right: curve point and division points for parameter
)
starts with

1. three points not on a line,

2. divides the line sections and each into equally spaced line segments and adds numbers as shown in the
picture.
3. Then the lines are tangents of a parabola, hence elements of a dual parabola.
4. The parabola is a Bezier curve of degree 2 with the control points .
The proof is a consequence of the de Casteljau algorithm for a Bezier curve of degree 2.

Inscribed angles and the 3-point-form

A parabola with equation is uniquely determined by three
points with different x-coordinates. The usual procedure to
determine the coefficients is to insert the point coordinates into the equation. The
result is a linear system of three equations, which can be solved by Gaussian elimination
or Cramer's rule, for example. An alternative way uses the inscribed angle theorem for
parabolas:

In the following, the angle of two lines will be measured by the difference of the slopes
of the line with respect to the directrix of the parabola. That is, for a parabola of
equation the angle between two lines of equations
is measured by
Inscribed angles of a parabola
Analogous to the inscribed angle theorem for circles one has the Inscribed angle
theorem for parabolas:[10][11]
 Four points with different x-coordinates (see picture), are on a parabola
with equation if and only if the angles at and have the same measure, as
defined above. That is,

(Proof: straightforward calculation: If the points are on a parabola, one may translate the coordinates for having the equation

then one has if the points are on the parabola.)

A consequence is that the equation (in ) of the parabola determined by 3 points with different x-
coordinates is (if two x-coordinates are equal there is no parabola with directrix parallel to the x-axis, which passes through the
points)

Multiplying by the denominators that depend on one obtains the more standard form

Pole-polar relation
In a suitable coordinate system any parabola can be described by an equation .
The equation of the tangent at a point is

One obtains the function

on the set of points of the parabola onto the set of tangents.

Obviously this function can be extended onto the set of all points of to a bijection
between the points of and the lines with equations . The
Parabola: pol-polar-relation
inverse mapping is

line point .

This relation is called the pole-polar relation of the parabola, where the point is the pole and the corresponding line its polar.

By calculation one checks the following properties of the pole-polar relation of the parabola:

For a point (pole) on the parabola the polar is the tangent at this point (see picture: ).
For a pole outside the parabola the intersection points of its polar with the parabola are the touching points of the two
tangents passing (see picture: ).
For a point within the parabola the polar has no point with the parabola in common. (see picture: and ).
The intersection point of two polar lines (for example: ) is the pole of the connecting line of their poles (in example:
).
focus and directrix of the parabola are a pole-polar pair.
Remark: Pole-polar relations exist for ellipses and hyperbolas, too.

Tangent properties
Two tangent properties related to the latus rectum
Let the line of symmetry intersect the parabola at point Q, and denote the focus as point F and its distance from point Q as f. Let the
perpendicular to the line of symmetry, through the focus, intersect the parabola at a point T. Then (1) the distance from F to T is 2f,
and (2) a tangent to the parabola at point T intersects the line of symmetry at a 45° angle.[12]:p.26

Orthoptic property
If two tangents to a parabola are perpendicular to each other, then they intersect on the
directrix. Conversely, two tangents which intersect on the directrix are perpendicular.

Lambert's theorem
Let three tangents to a parabola form a triangle. Then Lambert's theorem states that
the focus of the parabola lies on the circumcircle of the triangle.[13][8]:Corollary 20 Perpendicular tangents intersect on
the directrix
Tsukerman's converse to Lambert's theorem states that, given three lines that bound a
triangle, if two of the lines are tangent to a parabola whose focus lies on the circumcircle
of the triangle, then the third line is also tangent to the parabola.[14]

Facts related to chords

Focal length calculated from parameters of a chord

Suppose a chord crosses a parabola perpendicular to its axis of symmetry. Let the length of the chord between the points where it
intersects the parabola be c and the distance from the vertex of the parabola to the chord, measured along the axis of symmetry, be
d. The focal length, f, of the parabola is given by:

Proof

Suppose a system of Cartesian coordinates is used such that the vertex of the parabola is at the origin, and the axis of symmetry is
the y-axis. The parabola opens upward. It is shown elsewhere in this article that the equation of the parabola is 4fy = x2, where f is
c
the focal length. At the positive x end of the chord, x = 2 and y = d. Since this point is on the parabola, these coordinates must
c 2 c2
satisfy the equation above. Therefore, by substitution, 4fd = ( 2 ) . From this, f = 16d .

Area enclosed between a parabola and a chord

The area enclosed between a parabola and a chord (see diagram) is two-thirds of the area of a Parabola (magenta) and line
parallelogram which surrounds it. One side of the parallelogram is the chord, and the opposite (lower light blue) including
side is a tangent to the parabola.[15][16] The slope of the other parallel sides is irrelevant to the a chord (blue). The area
enclosed between them is in
area. Often, as here, they are drawn parallel with the parabola's axis of symmetry, but this is
pink. The chord itself ends
arbitrary.
at the points where the line
intersects the parabola.
A theorem equivalent to this one, but different in details, was derived by Archimedes in the
3rd Century BCE. He used the areas of triangles, rather than that of the parallelogram.[e] See
the article "The Quadrature of the Parabola".

If the chord has length b, and is perpendicular to the parabola's axis of symmetry, and if the
perpendicular distance from the parabola's vertex to the chord is h, the parallelogram is a
rectangle, with sides of b and h. The area, A, of the parabolic segment enclosed by the
parabola and the chord is therefore:
 1
This formula can be compared with the area of a triangle: bh.
2

In general, the enclosed area can be calculated as follows. First, locate the point on the
parabola where its slope equals that of the chord. This can be done with calculus, or by using a
line that is parallel with the axis of symmetry of the parabola and passes through the midpoint
of the chord. The required point is where this line intersects the parabola.[f] Then, using the
formula given in the article "Distance from a point to a line", calculate the perpendicular
distance from this point to the chord. Multiply this by the length of the chord to get the area of
2
the parallelogram, then by 3 to get the required enclosed area.

Corollary concerning midpoints and endpoints of chords

A corollary of the above discussion is that if a parabola has several parallel chords, their
midpoints all lie on a line which is parallel to the axis of symmetry. If tangents to the parabola
are drawn through the endpoints of any of these chords, the two tangents intersect on
this same line parallel to the axis of symmetry (see Axis-direction of a parabola).[g]

Midpoints of parallel chords

Arc length
If a point X is located on a parabola which has focal length f, and if p is the perpendicular distance from X to the axis of symmetry
of the parabola, then the lengths of arcs of the parabola which terminate at X can be calculated from f and p as follows, assuming
they are all expressed in the same units.[h]

This quantity, s, is the length of the arc between X and the vertex of the parabola.

The length of the arc between X and the symmetrically opposite point on the other side of the parabola is 2s.

The perpendicular distance, p, can be given a positive or negative sign to indicate on which side of the axis of symmetry X is
situated. Reversing the sign of p reverses the signs of h and s without changing their absolute values. If these quantities are signed,
the length of the arc between any two points on the parabola is always shown by the difference between their
values of s. The calculation can be simplified by using the properties of logarithms:
This can be useful, for example, in calculating the size of the material needed to make a parabolic reflector or parabolic trough.

This calculation can be used for a parabola in any orientation. It is not restricted to the situation where the axis of symmetry is
parallel to the y-axis.

A geometrical construction to find a sector area

S is the Focus and V is the Principal Vertex of the parabola VG. Draw VX perpendicular to SV.

Take any point B on VG and drop a perpendicular BQ from B to VX. Draw perpendicular ST intersecting BQ, extended if necessary,
at T. At B draw the perpendicular BJ, intersecting VX at J.

For the parabola, the segment VBV, the area enclosed by the chord VB and the arc VB, is equal to ∆VBQ / 3, also

The Area of the Parabolic Sector SVB = ∆SVB + ∆VBQ / 3

Since triangles TSB and QBJ are similar:

Therefore, the Area of the Parabolic Sector , and can be found from the length of VJ, as found above.

It should be noted that a circle through S, V and B also passes through J.

Conversely, if a point, B on the parabola VG is to be found so that the Area of the Sector SVB is equal to a specified value, determine
the point J on VX, and construct a circle through S, V and J. Since SJ is the diameter, the center of the circle is at its midpoint, and
it lies on the perpendicular bisector of SV, a distance of one half VJ from SV. The point required, B is where this circle intersects the
parabola.

If a body traces the path of the parabola due to an inverse square force directed towards S, the area SVB increases at a constant rate
as point B moves forward. It follows that J moves at constant speed along VX as B moves along the parabola.
If the speed of the body at the vertex, where it is moving perpendicularly to SV is v, then the speed of J is equal to 3v/4.

The construction can be extended simply to include the case where neither radius coincides with the axis, SV as follows. Let A be a
fixed point on VG between V and B, and point H be the intersection on VX with the perpendicular to SA at A. From the above, the

Area of the Parabolic Sector

Conversely, if it is required to find the point B for a particular area SAB, find point J from HJ and point B as before. By Book 1
Proposition 16, Corollary 6 of the Principia, the speed of a body moving along a parabola with a force directed towards the focus is

inversely proportional to the square root of the radius. If the speed at A is v, then at the vertex, V it is , and point J moves at

a constant speed of

The above construction was devised by Isaac Newton and can be found in Book 1 of the Principia as Proposition 30.

Focal length and radius of curvature at the vertex

The focal length of a parabola is half of its radius of curvature at its vertex.

Proof

Image is inverted. AB is x-axis. C is origin. O is center. The radius of curvature at the vertex is twice the focal
A is (x, y). OA = OC = R. PA = x. CP = y. OP = length. The measurements shown on the above
(R − y). Other points and lines are irrelevant for this diagram are in units of the latus rectum, which is four
purpose. times the focal length.

Consider a point (x, y) on a circle of radius R and with center at the point (0, R). The circle passes through the origin. If the point is
near the origin, the Pythagorean theorem shows that:
But if (x, y) is extremely close to the origin, since the x-axis is a tangent to the circle, y is very small compared with x, so y2 is
negligible compared with the other terms. Therefore, extremely close to the origin:

(Equation 1)

Compare this with the parabola:

(Equation 2)

which has its vertex at the origin, opens upward, and has focal length f. (See preceding sections of this article.)

Equations 1 and 2 are equivalent if R = 2f. Therefore, this is the condition for the circle and parabola to coincide at and extremely
close to the origin. The radius of curvature at the origin, which is the vertex of the parabola, is twice the focal length.

Corollary

A concave mirror which is a small segment of a sphere behaves approximately like a parabolic mirror, focusing parallel light to a
point which is midway between the centre and the surface of the sphere.

As the affine image of the unit parabola

Another definition of a parabola uses affine transformations:

Any parabola is the affine image of the unit parabola with equation .

An affine transformation of the Euclidean plane has the form , where is

a regular matrix (determinant is not 0) and is an arbitrary vector. If are the
column vectors of the matrix , the unit parabola is mapped onto the
parabola

Parabola as an affine image of the

unit parabola

is a point of the parabola and

is a tangent vector at point .
is parallel to the axis of the parabola (axis of symmetry through the vertex).

In general the two vectors are not perpendicular and is not the vertex, unless the affine transformation is a similarity.

The tangent vector at the point is . At the vertex the tangent vector is orthogonal to . Hence the

parameter of the vertex is the solution of the equation , which is and

is the vertex.

The focal length can be determined by a suitable parameter transformation (which does not change the geometric shape of the
parabola). The focal length is

Hence
 is the focus of the parabola.

Remark: The advantage of this definition is, one obtains a simple parametric representation of an arbitrary parabola, even in the
space, if the vectors are vectors of the Euclidean space.

As quadratic Bézier curve

A quadratic Bézier curve is a curve defined by three points , and ,
its control points:

Quadratic Bézier curve and its

control points

This curve is an arc of a parabola (see § As the affine image of the unit parabola).

Numerical integration
For numerical integration one replaces the graph of a function by arcs of parabolas and
integrates the parabola arcs. A parabola is determined by three points. The formula for
one arc is

The method is called Simpson's rule.

Simpson's rule: the graph of a
function is replaced by an arc of a
As plane section of quadric parabola
The following quadrics contain parabolas as plane sections:

Elliptical Cone
Parabolic cylinder
Elliptical paraboloid
Hyperbolic paraboloid
Hyperboloid of one sheet
Hyperboloid of two sheets
 Elliptic cone Parabolic cylinder Elliptic paraboloid Hyperbolic paraboloid

Hyperboloid of one Hyperboloid of two

sheet sheets

As trisectrix
A parabola can be used as a trisectrix, that is it allows the exact trisection of
an arbitrary angle with straightedge and compass. Note that this is not in
contradiction to the impossibility of an angle trisection with compass-and-
straightedge constructions alone, as the use of parabolas is not allowed in the
classic rules for compass-and-straightedge constructions.

To trisect place its leg on the x-axis such that the vertex is in
the coordinate system's origin. The coordinate system also contains the
parabola . The unit circle with radius 1 around the origin intersects
the angle's other leg and from this point of intersection draw the
perpendicular onto the y-axis. The parallel to y-axis through the midpoint of
that perpendicular and the tangent on the unit circle in intersect in .
The circle around with radius intersects the parabola in . The Angle trisection with a parabola
perpendicular from onto the x-axis intersects the unit circle in and
is exactly one third of .

The correctness of this construction can be seen by showing that the x-coordinate of is . Solving the equation system
given by the circle around and the parabola leads to the cubic equation . The triple angle formula
then shows that is indeed a solution of that cubic equation.

This trisection goes back to René Descartes who described it in his book La Geometria (1637).[17]

Generalizations
If one replaces the real numbers by an arbitrary field, many geometric properties of the parabola are still valid: 1) a line
intersects in at most two points. 2) At any point the line is the tangent.... Essentially new phenomena
arise, if the field has characteristic 2 (i.e., ) : the tangents are all parallel.

In algebraic geometry, the parabola is generalized by the rational normal curves, which have coordinates (x, x2, x3,…,xn); the
standard parabola is the case n =2, and the case n = 3 is known as the twisted cubic. A further generalization is given by the
Veronese variety, when there is more than one input variable.
In the theory of quadratic forms, the parabola is the graph of the quadratic form x2 (or other scalings), while the elliptic paraboloid
is the graph of the positive-definite quadratic form x2 + y2 (or scalings) and the hyperbolic paraboloid is the graph of the indefinite
quadratic form x2 − y2. Generalizations to more variables yield further such objects.

The curves y = x p for other values of p are traditionally referred to as the higher parabolas, and were originally treated
implicitly, in the form x p = ky q for p and q both positive integers, in which form they are seen to be algebraic curves. These
correspond to the explicit formula y = x p/q for a positive fractional power of x. Negative fractional powers correspond to the
implicit equation x py q = k, and are traditionally referred to as higher hyperbolas. Analytically, x can also be raised to an
irrational power (for positive values of x); the analytic properties are analogous to when x is raised to rational powers, but the
resulting curve is no longer algebraic, and cannot be analyzed via algebraic geometry.

In the physical world

In nature, approximations of parabolas and paraboloids are found in many diverse situations. The best-known instance of the
parabola in the history of physics is the trajectory of a particle or body in motion under the influence of a uniform gravitational field
without air resistance (for instance, a ball flying through the air, neglecting air friction).

The parabolic trajectory of projectiles was discovered experimentally by Galileo in the early 17th century, who performed
experiments with balls rolling on inclined planes. He also later proved this mathematically in his book Dialogue Concerning Two
New Sciences.[18][i] For objects extended in space, such as a diver jumping from a diving board, the object itself follows a complex
motion as it rotates, but the center of mass of the object nevertheless forms a parabola. As in all cases in the physical world, the
trajectory is always an approximation of a parabola. The presence of air resistance, for example, always distorts the shape, although
at low speeds, the shape is a good approximation of a parabola. At higher speeds, such as in ballistics, the shape is highly distorted
and doesn't resemble a parabola.

Another hypothetical situation in which parabolas might arise, according to the theories of physics described in the 17th and 18th
centuries by Sir Isaac Newton, is in two-body orbits; for example the path of a small planetoid or other object under the influence of
the gravitation of the Sun. Parabolic orbits do not occur in nature; simple orbits most commonly resemble hyperbolas or ellipses.
The parabolic orbit is the degenerate intermediate case between those two types of ideal orbit. An object following a parabolic orbit
would travel at the exact escape velocity of the object it orbits; objects in elliptical or hyperbolic orbits travel at less or greater than
escape velocity, respectively. Long-period comets travel close to the Sun's escape velocity while they are moving through the inner
solar system, so their paths are near parabolic.

Approximations of parabolas are also found in the shape of the main cables on a simple suspension bridge. The curve of the chains
of a suspension bridge is always an intermediate curve between a parabola and a catenary, but in practice the curve is generally
nearer to a parabola, and in calculations the second degree parabola is used.[19][20] Under the influence of a uniform load (such as a
horizontal suspended deck), the otherwise catenary-shaped cable is deformed toward a parabola. Unlike an inelastic chain, a freely
hanging spring of zero unstressed length takes the shape of a parabola. Suspension-bridge cables are, ideally, purely in tension,
without having to carry other, e.g., bending, forces. Similarly, the structures of parabolic arches are purely in compression.

Paraboloids arise in several physical situations as well. The best-known instance is the parabolic reflector, which is a mirror or
similar reflective device that concentrates light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation to a common focal point, or conversely,
collimates light from a point source at the focus into a parallel beam. The principle of the parabolic reflector may have been
discovered in the 3rd century BC by the geometer Archimedes, who, according to a dubious legend,[21] constructed parabolic
mirrors to defend Syracuse against the Roman fleet, by concentrating the sun's rays to set fire to the decks of the Roman ships. The
principle was applied to telescopes in the 17th century. Today, paraboloid reflectors can be commonly observed throughout much of
the world in microwave and satellite-dish receiving and transmitting antennas.

In parabolic microphones, a parabolic reflector is used to focus sound onto a microphone, giving it highly directional performance.

Paraboloids are also observed in the surface of a liquid confined to a container and rotated around the central axis. In this case, the
centrifugal force causes the liquid to climb the walls of the container, forming a parabolic surface. This is the principle behind the
liquid mirror telescope.
Aircraft used to create a weightless state for purposes of experimentation, such as NASA's "Vomit Comet", follow a vertically
parabolic trajectory for brief periods in order to trace the course of an object in free fall, which produces the same effect as zero
gravity for most purposes.

In the United States, vertical curves in roads are usually parabolic by design.

Gallery
Click on any image to enlarge it.
A bouncing ball captured Parabolic trajectories of The path (in red) of The supporting cables of
with a stroboscopic flash water in a fountain. Comet Kohoutek as it suspension bridges
at 25 images per passed through the follow a curve which is
second. Note that the inner solar system, intermediate between a
ball becomes showing its nearly parabola and a
significantly non- parabolic shape. The catenary.
spherical after each blue orbit is the Earth's
bounce, especially after
the first. That, along with
spin and air resistance,
causes the curve swept
out to deviate slightly
from the expected
perfect parabola.

The Rainbow Bridge Parabolic arches used in Parabolic shape formed Solar cooker with
across the Niagara architecture by a liquid surface under parabolic reflector
River, connecting rotation. Two liquids of
Canada (left) to the different densities
United States (right). completely fill a narrow
The parabolic arch is in space between two
compression, and sheets of transparent
carries the weight of the plastic. The gap
road. between the sheets is
closed at the bottom,
sides and top. The
whole assembly is
rotating around a vertical
axis passing through the
centre. (See Rotating
furnace)
Parabolic antenna Parabolic microphone Array of parabolic Edison's searchlight,
with optically transparent troughs to collect solar mounted on a cart. The
plastic reflector, used to energy light had a parabolic
overhear referee reflector.
conversations at an
American college
football game.

Physicist Stephen
Hawking in an aircraft
flying a parabolic
trajectory to simulate
zero-gravity

See also
Catenary
Degenerate conic
Ellipse
Hyperbola
Liquid mirror telescope, paraboloids produced by rotation
Parabolic dome
Parabolic partial differential equation
Parabolic reflector
Paraboloid
Quadratic equation
Quadratic function
Universal parabolic constant

Footnotes
a. The tangential plane just touches the conical surface along a line which passes through the apex of the cone
b. In the diagram, the axis is not exactly vertical. This is the result of a technical problem that occurs when a 3-dimensional model
is converted into a 2-dimensional image. Readers should imagine the cone rotated slightly clockwise, so the axis, AV, is
vertical.
c. As stated above in the lead, the focal length of a parabola is the distance between its vertex and focus.
d. The point V is the centre of the smaller circular cross-section of the cone. The point F is in the (pink) plane of the parabola, and
the line VF is perpendicular to the plane of the parabola.
 e. Archimedes proved that the area of the enclosed parabolic segment was 43 as large as that of a triangle that he inscribed within
the enclosed segment. It can easily be shown that the parallelogram has twice the area of the triangle, so Archimedes' proof
also proves the theorem with the parallelogram.
f. This method can be easily proved correct by calculus. It was also known and used by Archimedes, although he lived nearly
2000 years before calculus was invented.
g. A proof of this sentence can be inferred from the proof of the orthoptic property, above. It is shown there that the tangents to
the parabola y = x2 at (p, p2) and (q, q2) intersect at a point whose x-coordinate is the mean of p and q. Thus if there is a
chord between these two points, the intersection point of the tangents has the same x-coordinate as the midpoint of the chord.
h. In this calculation, the square root, q, must be positive. The quantity ln a is the natural logarithm of a, i.e., its logarithm to
base e.
i. However, this parabolic shape, as Newton recognized, is only an approximation of the actual elliptical shape of the trajectory,
and is obtained by assuming that the gravitational force is constant (not pointing toward the center of the earth) in the area of
interest. Often, this difference is negligible, and leads to a simpler formula for tracking motion.

Citations
1. "Can You Really Derive Conic Formulae from a Cone? - Deriving the Symptom of the Parabola - Mathematical Association of
America" (http://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/can-you-really-derive-conic-formulae-from-a-cone-deriving-the-s
ymptom-of-the-parabola). Retrieved 30 September 2016.
2. Wilson, Ray N. (2004). Reflecting Telescope Optics: Basic design theory and its historical development (https://books.google.c
om/books?id=PuN7l2A2uzQC) (2 ed.). Springer. p. 3. ISBN 3-540-40106-7. Extract of page 3 (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=PuN7l2A2uzQC&pg=PA3)
3. Stargazer, p. 115 (https://books.google.com/books?id=2LZZginzib4C&pg=PA115&dq=mersenne+zucchi+parallel#PPA115,M1).
4. Stargazer, pp. 123 and 132 (https://books.google.com/books?id=2LZZginzib4C&pg=PA132&dq=Gregory++telescope+French+
convex)
5. Fitzpatrick, Richard (July 14, 2007). "Spherical Mirrors" (http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/316/lectures/node136.html).
Electromagnetism and Optics, lectures. University of Texas at Austin. Paraxial Optics. Retrieved October 5, 2011.
6. Kumpel, P.G. (1975), "Do similar figures always have the same shape?", The Mathematics Teacher, 68 (8): 626–628,
ISSN 0025-5769 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0025-5769)
7. Shriki, Atara; David, Hamatal (2011), "Similarity of Parabolas - A Geometrical Perspective", Learning and Teaching
Mathematics, 11: 29–34
8. Tsukerman, Emmanuel (2013). "On Polygons Admitting a Simson Line as Discrete Analogs of Parabolas" (http://forumgeom.fa
u.edu/FG2013volume13/FG201321.pdf) (PDF). Forum Geometricorum. 13: 197–208.
9. Planar Circle Geometries, an Introduction to Moebius-, Laguerre- and Minkowski-planes, p. 36 (http://www.mathematik.tu-darm
stadt.de/~ehartmann/circlegeom.pdf)
10. E. Hartmann: Lecture Note Planar Circle Geometries, an Introduction to Möbius-, Laguerre- and Minkowski Planes, p. 72 (htt
p://www.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de/~ehartmann/circlegeom.pdf)
11. W. Benz, Vorlesungen über Geomerie der Algebren, Springer (1973)
12. Downs, J. W. (2003). Practical Conic Sections. Dover Publishing.
13. Sondow, Jonathan (2013). "The parbelos, a parabolic analog of the arbelos". American Mathematical Monthly. 120: 929–935.
arXiv:1210.2279 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.2279). doi:10.4169/amer.math.monthly.120.10.929 (https://doi.org/10.4169%2Fam
er.math.monthly.120.10.929).
14. Tsukerman, Emmanuel (2014). "Solution of Sondow's problem: a synthetic proof of the tangency property of the parbelos".
American Mathematical Monthly. 121: 438–443. arXiv:1210.5580 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.5580).
doi:10.4169/amer.math.monthly.121.05.438 (https://doi.org/10.4169%2Famer.math.monthly.121.05.438).
15. "Sovrn Container" (http://www.mathwarehouse.com/geometry/parabola/area-of-parabola.php). Mathwarehouse.com. Retrieved
2016-09-30.
16. "Parabola" (http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/math/parabola.htm). Mysite.du.edu. Retrieved 2016-09-30.
17. Robert C. Yates: The Trisection Problem. National Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Jan., 1941), pp. 191-202 (JSTOR (ht
tps://www.jstor.org/stable/3028133))
18. Dialogue Concerning Two New Sciences (1638) (The Motion of Projectiles: Theorem 1)
19. Troyano, Leonardo Fernández (2003). Bridge engineering: a global perspective (https://books.google.com/books?id=0u5G8E3
uPUAC&pg=PA536). Thomas Telford. p. 536. ISBN 0-7277-3215-3.
20. Drewry, Charles Stewart (1832). A memoir of suspension bridges (https://books.google.com/books?id=Nk-pQT7-EM4C&pg=P
A159). Oxford University. p. 159.
21. Middleton, W. E. Knowles (December 1961). "Archimedes, Kircher, Buffon, and the Burning-Mirrors". Isis. Published by: The
University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society. 52 (4): 533–543. doi:10.1086/349498 (https://doi.org/
10.1086%2F349498). JSTOR 228646 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/228646).

Further reading
Lockwood, E. H. (1961). A Book of Curves. Cambridge University Press.

External links
Hazewinkel, Michiel, ed. (2001) [1994], "Parabola" (https://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php?title=p/p071150),
Encyclopedia of Mathematics, Springer Science+Business Media B.V. / Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 978-1-55608-010-
4
Weisstein, Eric W. "Parabola" (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Parabola.html). MathWorld.
Interactive parabola-drag focus, see axis of symmetry, directrix, standard and vertex forms (http://www.mathwarehouse.com/qu
adratic/parabola/interactive-parabola.php)
Archimedes Triangle and Squaring of Parabola (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Geometry/ArchimedesTriangle.shtml)
at cut-the-knot
Two Tangents to Parabola (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Geometry/ParabolaLambert.shtml) at cut-the-knot
Parabola As Envelope of Straight Lines (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Geometry/ParabolaEnvelope.shtml) at cut-the-
knot
Parabolic Mirror (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Geometry/ParabolaMirror.shtml) at cut-the-knot
Three Parabola Tangents (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Geometry/ThreeParabolaTangents.shtml) at cut-the-knot
Focal Properties of Parabola (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Geometry/ParabolaFocal.shtml) at cut-the-knot
Parabola As Envelope II (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Geometry/ParabolaMesh.shtml) at cut-the-knot
The similarity of parabola (http://dynamicmathematicslearning.com/similarparabola.html) at Dynamic Geometry Sketches (htt
p://dynamicmathematicslearning.com/JavaGSPLinks.htm), interactive dynamic geometry sketch.

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Hyperbola
In mathematics, a hyperbola (plural hyperbolas or hyperbolae) is a type of smooth
curve lying in a plane, defined by its geometric properties or by equations for which it is
the solution set. 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 ellipse.) If the plane intersects both halves of the double cone but does not pass
through the apex of the cones, then the conic is a hyperbola.

Hyperbolas arise in many ways:

as the curve representing the function in the Cartesian plane,

as the path followed by the shadow of the tip of a sundial,
as the shape of an open orbit (as distinct from a closed elliptical orbit), such as the
orbit of a spacecraft during a gravity assisted swing-by of a planet or more generally
any spacecraft exceeding the escape velocity of the nearest planet,
as the path of a single-apparition comet (one travelling too fast ever to return to the
solar system),
as the scattering trajectory of a subatomic particle (acted on by repulsive instead of A hyperbola is an open curve with
attractive forces but the principle is the same),
two branches, the intersection of a
in radio navigation, when the difference between distances to two points, but not the
plane with both halves of a double
distances themselves, can be determined,
cone. The plane does not have to
and so on. be parallel to the axis of the cone;
the hyperbola will be symmetrical
Each branch of the hyperbola has two arms which become straighter (lower curvature) in any case.
further out from the center of the hyperbola. Diagonally opposite arms, one from each
branch, tend in the limit to a common line, called the asymptote of those
two arms. So there are two asymptotes, whose intersection is at the center
of symmetry of the hyperbola, which can be thought of as the mirror point
about which each branch reflects to form the other branch. In the case of
the curve the asymptotes are the two coordinate axes.

Hyperbolas share many of the ellipses' analytical properties such as

eccentricity, focus, and directrix. Typically the correspondence can be
made with nothing more than a change of sign in some term. Many other
mathematical objects have their origin in the hyperbola, such as
hyperbolic paraboloids (saddle surfaces), hyperboloids ("wastebaskets"),
hyperbolic geometry (Lobachevsky's celebrated non-Euclidean geometry),
hyperbolic functions (sinh, cosh, tanh, etc.), and gyrovector spaces (a
geometry proposed for use in both relativity and quantum mechanics
Hyperbola (red): features
which is not Euclidean).

Etymology and history

The word "hyperbola" derives from the Greek ὑπερβολή, meaning "over-thrown" or "excessive", from which the English term
hyperbole also derives. Hyperbolae were discovered by Menaechmus in his investigations of the problem of doubling the cube, but
were then called sections of obtuse cones.[1] The term hyperbola is believed to have been coined by Apollonius of Perga (c. 262–c.
190 BC) in his definitive work on the conic sections, the Conics.[2] The names of the other two general conic sections, the ellipse and
the parabola, derive from the corresponding Greek words for "deficient" and "applied"; all three names are borrowed from earlier
Pythagorean terminology which referred to a comparison of the side of rectangles of fixed area with a given line segment. The
rectangle could be "applied" to the segment (meaning, have an equal length), be shorter than the segment or exceed the segment.[3]

Definition of a hyperbola as locus of points

A hyperbola can be defined geometrically as a set of points (locus of points) in the
Euclidean plane:

A hyperbola is a set of points, such that for any point of the set, the absolute
difference of the distances to two fixed points (the foci), is
constant, usually denoted by

The midpoint of the line segment joining the foci is called the center of the
hyperbola. The line through the foci is called the major axis. It contains the vertices
, which have distance to the center. The distance of the foci to the center is
Hyperbola: definition by the
called the focal distance or linear eccentricity. The quotient is the eccentricity .
distances of points to two fixed
points (foci)
The equation can be viewed in a different way (see diagram):
If is the circle with midpoint and radius , then the distance of a point of the
right branch to the circle equals the distance to the focus :

is called the circular directrix (related to focus ) of the hyperbola.[4][5] In order to

get the left branch of the hyperbola, one has to use the circular directrix related to .
This property should not be confused with the definition of a hyperbola with help of a
directrix (line) below.

Hyperbola: definition with director

Hyperbola in Cartesian coordinates circle

Equation
If Cartesian coordinates are introduced such that the origin is the center of the hyperbola and the x-axis is the major axis, then the
hyperbola is called east-west-opening and

the foci are the points ,

the vertices are .

For an arbitrary point the distance to the focus is and to the second focus . Hence the
point is on the hyperbola if the following condition is fulfilled

Remove the square roots by suitable squarings and use the relation to obtain the equation of the hyperbola:

This equation is called the canonical form of a hyperbola, because any hyperbola, regardless of its orientation relative to the
Cartesian axes and regardless of the location of its center, can be transformed to this form by a change of variables, giving a
hyperbola that is congruent to the original (see below).
The axes of symmetry or principal axes are the transverse axis (containing the segment of length 2a with endpoints at the vertices)
and the conjugate axis (containing the segment of length 2b perpendicular to the transverse axis and with midpoint at the
hyperbola’s center). As opposed to an ellipse, a hyperbola has only two vertices: . The two points on
the conjugate axis are not on the hyperbola.

It follows from the equation that the hyperbola is symmetric with respect to both of the coordinate axes and hence symmetric with
respect to the origin.

Eccentricity
For a hyperbola in the above canonical form, the eccentricity is given by

Two hyperbolas are geometrically similar to each other – meaning that they have the same shape, so that one can be transformed
into the other by rigid left and right movements, rotation, taking a mirror image, and scaling (magnification) – if and only if they
have the same eccentricity.

Asymptotes
Solving the equation (above) of the hyperbola for yields

It follows from this that the hyperbola approaches the two lines

for large values of . These two lines intersect at the center (origin) and are called
asymptotes of the hyperbola Hyperbola: semi-axes a,b, linear
eccentricity c, semi latus rectum p
With help of the figure one can see that

The distance from a focus to either asymptote is

(the semi-minor axis).

From the Hesse normal form of the asymptotes and the

equation of the hyperbola one gets:[6]

The product of the distances from a point on the

hyperbola to both the asymptotes is the constant
which can also be written in terms of the
Hyperbola: 3 properties
eccentricity e as

From the equation of the hyperbola (above) one can derive:

The product of the slopes of lines from a point P to the two vertices is the constant

In addition, from (2) above it can be shown that[6]

 The product of the distances from a point on the hyperbola to the asymptotes along lines parallel to
the asymptotes is the constant

Semi-latus rectum
The length of the chord through one of the foci, perpendicular to the major axis of the hyperbola, is called the latus rectum. One
half of it is the semi-latus rectum . A calculation shows

The semi-latus rectum may also be viewed as the radius of curvature of the osculating circles at the vertices.

Tangent
The simplest way to determine the equation of the tangent at a point is to implicitly differentiate the equation
of the hyperbola. Denoting dy/dx as y′, this produces

With respect to , the equation of the tangent at point is,

A particular tangent line distinguishes the hyperbola from the other conic sections.[7] Let f be the distance from the vertex V (on
both the hyperbola and its axis through the two foci) to the nearer focus. Then the distance, along a line perpendicular to that axis,
from that focus to a point P on the hyperbola is greater than 2f. The tangent to the hyperbola at P intersects that axis at point Q at
an angle ∠PQV of greater than 45°.

Rectangular hyperbola
In the case the hyperbola is called rectangular (or equilateral), because its asymptotes intersect rectangularly (i.e., are
perpendicular). For this case, the linear eccentricity is , the eccentricity and the semi-latus rectum .

Parametric representation with hyperbolic sine/cosine

Using the hyperbolic sine and cosine functions , a parametric representation of the hyperbola can be
obtained, which is similar to the parametric representation of an ellipse:

which satisfies the Cartesian equation because

Further parametric representations are given in the section Parametric equations below.

Conjugate hyperbola
Exchange and to obtain the equation of the conjugate hyperbola (see diagram):

also written as
Hyperbola with equation y=A/x
If the xy-coordinate system is rotated about the origin by the angle and new
coordinates are assigned, then .

The rectangular hyperbola (whose semi-axes are equal) has the new equation

. Solving for yields

Thus, in an xy-coordinate system the graph of a function with

equation

is a rectangular hyperbola entirely in the first and third quadrants Here a = b = 1 giving the unit
with hyperbola in blue and its conjugate
the coordinate axes as asymptotes, hyperbola in green, sharing the
the line as major axis , same red asymptotes.

the center and the semi-axis

the vertices
the semi-latus rectum and radius of curvature at the vertices
the linear eccentricity and the eccentricity
the tangent at point

A rotation of the original hyperbola by results in a rectangular hyperbola entirely

in the second and fourth quadrants, with the same asymptotes, center, semi-latus
rectum, radius of curvature at the vertices, linear eccentricity, and eccentricity as for the
case of rotation, with equation

Rotating the coordinate system in

the semi-axes
order to describe a rectangular
the line as major axis, hyperbola as graph of a function
the vertices

Shifting the hyperbola with equation so that the new center is ,

yields the new equation

and the new asymptotes are and .

The shape parameters remain unchanged.

Definition of a hyperbola by the directrix

property
Three rectangular hyperbolas
The two lines at distance and parallel to the minor axis are called directrices with the coordinate axes
as asymptotes
of the hyperbola (see diagram).
red: A=1, magenta: A=4; blue: A=9
For an arbitrary point of the hyperbola the quotient of the distance to one focus
and to the corresponding directrix (see diagram) is equal to the eccentricity:
The proof for the pair follows from the fact that
and
satisfy the equation

The second case is proven analogously.

The inverse statement is also true and can be used to define a hyperbola
(in a manner similar to the definition of a parabola):

For any point (focus), any line (directrix) not through and any
real number with the set of points (locus of points), for which
the quotient of the distances to the point and to the line is
Hyperbola: directrix property

is a hyperbola.

(The choice yields a parabola and if an ellipse.)

Proof

Let and assume is a point on the curve. The

directrix has equation . With , the relation
produces the equations

and
Hyperbola: definition with directrix property

The substitution yields

This is the equation of an ellipse ( ) or a parabola ( ) or a hyperbola ( ).

All of these non-degenerate conics have, in common, the origin as a vertex (see
diagram).

If , introduce new parameters so that , and then

the equation above becomes

which is the equation of a hyperbola with center , the x-axis as major axis and
the major/minor semi axis . Pencil of conics with a common
vertex and common semi latus
rectum
Hyperbola as plane section of a cone
The intersection of an upright double cone by a plane not through the vertex with slope
greater than the slope of the lines on the cone is a hyperbola (see diagram: red curve). In order to prove the defining property of a
hyperbola (see above) one uses two Dandelin spheres , which are spheres that touch the cone along circles , and the
intersecting (hyperbola) plane at points and . It turns out: are the foci of the hyperbola.

1. Let be an arbitrary point of the intersection curve .

 2. The generator (line) of the cone containing
intersects circle at point and circle
at a point .
3. The line segments and are
tangential to the sphere and, hence, are
of equal length.
4. The line segments and are
tangential to the sphere and, hence, are
of equal length.
5. The result is:
is
independent of the hyperbola point .

The tangent bisects the Hyperbola (red): two views of a cone and two Dandelin spheres d1, d2

angle between the lines

to the foci
For a hyperbola the following statement is true:

The tangent at a point bisects the angle between the lines

.

Proof

Let be the point on the line with the distance to the focus
(see diagram, is the semi major axis of the hyperbola). Line is the
bisector of the angle between the lines . In order to prove that
is the tangent line at point , one checks that any point on line which
is different from cannot be on the hyperbola. Hence has only point
in common with the hyperbola and is, therefore, the tangent at point .
Hyperbola: the tangent bisects the lines through
From the diagram and the triangle inequality one recognizes that
the foci
holds, which means:
. But if is a point of the hyperbola, the difference
should be .

Midpoints of parallel chords

The midpoints of parallel chords of a hyperbola lie on a line through the center (see
diagram).
The points of any chord may lie on different branches of the hyperbola.

The proof of the property on midpoints is best done for the hyperbola . Because
any hyperbola is an affine image of the hyperbola (see section below) and an
affine transformation preserves parallelism and midpoints of line segments, the
property is true for all hyperbolas:
For two points of the hyperbola

the midpoint of the chord is

Hyperbola: the midpoints of parallel
chords lie on a line.
the slope of the chord is

For parallel chords the slope is constant and the midpoints of the parallel chords lie on the line

Consequence: for any pair of points of a chord there exists a skew reflection with an axis (set of fixed points) passing through
the center of the hyperbola, which exchanges the points and leaves the hyperbola (as a whole) fixed. A skew reflection is a
generalization of an ordinary reflection across a line , where all point-image pairs are on a line perpendicular to .
Because a skew reflection leaves the hyperbola fixed, the pair of asymptotes is fixed, too.
Hence the midpoint of a chord divides the related line segment between
the asymptotes into halves, too. This means that . This property can be
used for the construction of further points of the hyperbola if a point and the
asymptotes are given.

If the chord degenerates into a tangent, then the touching point divides the line
segment between the asymptotes in two halves.

Steiner generation of a hyperbola

The following method to construct single points of a hyperbola relies on the Steiner
Hyperbola: the midpoint of a chord
generation of a non degenerate conic section:
is the midpoint of the corresponding
Given two pencils of lines at two points (all lines containing chord of the asymptotes.
and , respectively) and a projective but not perspective mapping of onto
, then the intersection points of corresponding lines form a non-
degenerate projective conic section.

For the generation of points of the hyperbola one uses the pencils at
the vertices . Let be a point of the hyperbola and
. The line segment is divided into n equally-spaced
segments and this division is projected parallel with the diagonal as direction
onto the line segment (see diagram). The parallel projection is part of the
projective mapping between the pencils at and needed. The intersection
points of any two related lines and are points of the uniquely defined
hyperbola. Hyperbola: Steiner generation

Remark: The subdivision could be extended beyond the points and in order to
get more points, but the determination of the intersection points would become more
inaccurate. A better idea is extending the points already constructed by symmetry (see
animation).

Remark:

1. The Steiner generation exists for ellipses and parabolas, too.

2. The Steiner generation is sometimes called a parallelogram method because one can
use other points rather than the vertices, which starts with a parallelogram instead of a
rectangle.

Inscribed angles for hyperbolas Hyperbola y=1/x: Steiner

generation
y=a/(x−b)+c and the 3-point-form
A hyperbola with equation is uniquely determined by three points
with different x- and y-coordinates. A simple way to determine the shape parameters uses the
inscribed angle theorem for hyperbolas:

In order to measure an angle between two lines with equations in this context
one uses the quotient

Analogous to the inscribed angle theorem for circles one gets the

Inscribed angle theorem for hyperbolas:,:[8][9]

 For four points
(see
diagram) the following statement is true:
The four points are on a hyperbola with equation
if and only if the angles at and are equal in the sense of
the measurement above. That means if

(Proof: straightforward calculation. If the points are on a hyperbola, one can

assume the hyperbola's equation is .)

A consequence of the inscribed angle theorem for hyperbolas is the

Hyperbola: inscribed angle theorem

3-point-form of a hyperbola's equation:

The equation of the hyperbola determined by 3 points

is the solution of the equation

for .

Orthogonal tangents - orthoptic

For a hyperbola the intersection points of orthogonal tangents lie

on the circle .
This circle is called the orthoptic of the given hyperbola.

The tangents may belong to points on different branches of the hyperbola.

In case of there are no pairs of orthogonal tangents.

Pole-polar relation for a hyperbola Hyperbola with its orthoptic

Any hyperbola can be described in a suitable coordinate system by an equation (magenta)

. The equation of the tangent at a point of the

hyperbola is If one allows point to be an arbitrary

point different from the origin, then

point is mapped onto the line , not

through the center of the hyperbola.
This relation between points and lines is a bijection.

The inverse function maps

line onto the point and

Hyperbola: pole-polar relation

line onto the point

Such a relation between points and lines generated by a conic is called pole-polar relation or just polarity. The pole is the point,
the polar the line. See Pole and polar.

By calculation one checks the following properties of the pole-polar relation of the hyperbola:

For a point (pole) on the hyperbola the polar is the tangent at this point (see diagram: ).
For a pole outside the hyperbola the intersection points of its polar with the hyperbola are the tangency points of the two
tangents passing (see diagram: ).
For a point within the hyperbola the polar has no point with the hyperbola in common. (see diagram: ).

Remarks:

1. The intersection point of two polars (for example: ) is the pole of the line through their poles (here: ).
2. The foci and respectively and the directrices and respectively belong to pairs of pole and
polar.
Pole-polar relations exist for ellipses and parabolas, too.

Hyperbola as an affine image of the unit hyperbola x²-y²=1

Another definition of a hyperbola uses affine transformations:

Any hyperbola is the affine image of the unit hyperbola with equation
.
An affine transformation of the Euclidean plane has the form
, where is a regular matrix (its determinant is not 0) and
is an arbitrary vector. If are the column vectors of the matrix ,
the unit hyperbola is mapped onto the
hyperbola

Hyperbola as an affine image of the unit

hyperbola
is the center, a point of the hyperbola and a tangent
vector at this point. In general the vectors are not perpendicular.
That means, in general are not the vertices of the hyperbola. But point into the directions of the asymptotes.

The tangent vector at point is

Because at a vertex the tangent is perpendicular to the major axis of the hyperbola one gets the parameter of a vertex from the
equation

and hence from

which yields

(The formulae were used.)

The two vertices of the hyperbola are

The advantage of this definition is that one gets a simple parametric representation of an arbitrary hyperbola, even in the space, if
the vectors are vectors of the Euclidean space.

Hyperbola as an affine image of the hyperbola y=1/x

Because the unit hyperbola is affinely equivalent to the
hyperbola , an arbitrary hyperbola can be considered as the affine
image (see previous section) of the hyperbola

is the center of the hyperbola, the vectors have the

directions of the asymptotes and is a point of the hyperbola. The
tangent vector is

Hyperbola as affine image of y=1/x

At a vertex the tangent is perpendicular to the major axis. Hence

and the parameter of a vertex is

is equivalent to and are the vertices of the hyperbola.

The following properties of a hyperbola are easily proven using the representation of a hyperbola introduced in this section.

Tangent construction
The tangent vector can be rewritten by factorization:

This means that

the diagonal of the parallelogram

is parallel to the
tangent at the hyperbola point (see diagram).
This property provides a way to construct the tangent at a point on the hyperbola. Tangent construction: asymptotes
and P given → tangent
This property of a hyperbola is an affine version of the 3-point-degeneration of Pascal's
theorem.[10]

Area of the grey parallelogram

The area of the grey parallelogram MAPB in the above diagram is

and hence independent of point P. The last equation follows from a calculation for the case, where P is a vertex and the hyperbola in
its canonical form
Point construction
For a hyperbola with parametric representation (for simplicity
the center is the origin) the following is true:

For any two points the points

are collinear with the center of the hyperbola (see diagram).

The simple proof is a consequence of the equation . Point construction: asymptotes and
P1 are given → P2
This property provides a possibility to construct points of a hyperbola if the asymptotes
and one point are given.

This property of a hyperbola is an affine version of the 4-point-degeneration of Pascal's theorem.[11]

Tangent-asymptotes-triangle
For simplicity the center of the hyperbola may be the origin and the vectors have
equal length. If the last assumption is not fulfilled one can first apply a parameter
transformation (see above) in order to make the assumption true. Hence
are the vertices, span the minor axis and one gets and
.

For the intersection points of the tangent at point with the

asymptotes one gets the points

Hyperbola: tangent-asymptotes-
triangle

The area of the triangle can be calculated by a 2x2-determinant:

(see rules for determinants). is the area of the rhombus generated by . The area of a rhombus is equal to one
half of the product of its diagonals. The diagonals are the semi-axes of the hyperbola. Hence:

The area of the triangle is independent of the point of the hyperbola:

Polar coordinates
pole = focus:

The polar coordinates used most commonly for the hyperbola are defined relative to the
Cartesian coordinate system that has its origin in a focus and its x-axis pointing
towards the origin of the "canonical coordinate system" as illustrated in the first
diagram.
In this case the angle is called true anomaly.

Relative to this coordinate system one has that

Hyperbola: Polar coordinates with

pole = focus

and
pole = center:

With polar coordinates relative to the "canonical coordinate system" (see second
diagram) one has that

Hyperbola: Polar coordinates with

pole = center
For the right branch of the hyperbola the range of is

Parametric equations
A hyperbola with equation can be described by several parametric equations:

1:

2: (rational representation)

3:

4: Tangent slope as parameter:

A parametric representation, which uses the slope of the tangent at a point of the hyperbola can be obtained analogously to the
ellipse case: Replace in the ellipse case by and use formulae for the hyperbolic functions. One gets

is the upper and the lower half of the hyperbola. The points with vertical tangents (vertices ) are not covered by the
representation.
The equation of the tangent at point is

This description of the tangents of a hyperbola is an essential tool for the determination of the orthoptic of a hyperbola.

Other mathematical definitions

Reciprocation of a circle
The reciprocation of a circle B in a circle C always yields a conic section such as a hyperbola. The process of "reciprocation in a
circle C" consists of replacing every line and point in a geometrical figure with their corresponding pole and polar, respectively. The
pole of a line is the inversion of its closest point to the circle C, whereas the polar of a point is the converse, namely, a line whose
closest point to C is the inversion of the point.
The eccentricity of the conic section obtained by reciprocation is the ratio of the distances between the two circles' centers to the
radius r of reciprocation circle C. If B and C represent the points at the centers of the corresponding circles, then

Since the eccentricity of a hyperbola is always greater than one, the center B must lie outside of the reciprocating circle C.

This definition implies that the hyperbola is both the locus of the poles of the tangent lines to the circle B, as well as the envelope of
the polar lines of the points on B. Conversely, the circle B is the envelope of polars of points on the hyperbola, and the locus of poles
of tangent lines to the hyperbola. Two tangent lines to B have no (finite) poles because they pass through the center C of the
reciprocation circle C; the polars of the corresponding tangent points on B are the asymptotes of the hyperbola. The two branches
of the hyperbola correspond to the two parts of the circle B that are separated by these tangent points.

Quadratic equation
A hyperbola can also be defined as a second-degree equation in the Cartesian coordinates (x, y) in the plane,

provided that the constants Axx, Axy, Ayy, Bx, By, and C satisfy the determinant condition

This determinant is conventionally called the discriminant of the conic section.[12]

A special case of a hyperbola—the degenerate hyperbola consisting of two intersecting lines—occurs when another determinant is
zero:

This determinant Δ is sometimes called the discriminant of the conic section.[13]

Given the above general parametrization of the hyperbola in Cartesian coordinates, the eccentricity can be found using the formula
in Conic section#Eccentricity in terms of parameters of the quadratic form.

The center (xc, yc) of the hyperbola may be determined from the formulae

In terms of new coordinates, ξ = x − xc and η = y − yc, the defining equation of the hyperbola can be written

The principal axes of the hyperbola make an angle φ with the positive x-axis that is given by
Rotating the coordinate axes so that the x-axis is aligned with the transverse axis brings the equation into its canonical form

The major and minor semiaxes a and b are defined by the equations

where λ1 and λ2 are the roots of the quadratic equation

For comparison, the corresponding equation for a degenerate hyperbola (consisting of two intersecting lines) is

The tangent line to a given point (x0, y0) on the hyperbola is defined by the equation

where E, F and G are defined by

The normal line to the hyperbola at the same point is given by the equation

The normal line is perpendicular to the tangent line, and both pass through the same point (x0, y0).

From the equation

the left focus is and the right focus is where e is the eccentricity. Denote the distances from a point (x, y) to the left
and right foci as and For a point on the right branch,

and for a point on the left branch,

This can be proved as follows:

If (x,y) is a point on the hyperbola the distance to the left focal point is

To the right focal point the distance is

If (x,y) is a point on the right branch of the hyperbola then and

Subtracting these equations one gets

If (x,y) is a point on the left branch of the hyperbola then and

Subtracting these equations one gets

Conic section analysis of the hyperbolic appearance of circles

Besides providing a uniform description of circles, ellipses,
parabolas, and hyperbolas, conic sections can also be understood
as a natural model of the geometry of perspective in the case
where the scene being viewed consists of circles, or more
generally an ellipse. The viewer is typically a camera or the
human eye and the image of the scene a central projection onto
an image plane, i.e., all projection rays pass a fixed point O, the
center. The lens plane is a plane parallel to the image plane at
the lens O.

The image of a circle c is

a) a circle, if circle c is in a special position, for

example parallel to the image plane and others
(see stereographic projection),
b) an ellipse, if c has no point with the lens Central projection of circles on a sphere: The center O of
plane in common, projection is inside the sphere, the image plane is red.
c) a parabola, if c has one point with the lens As images of the circles one gets a circle (magenta),
plane in common and ellipses, hyperbolas and lines. The special case of a
d) a hyperbola, if c has two points with the lens parabola does not appear in this example.
plane in common. (If center O were on the sphere, all images of the circles
would be circles or lines; see stereographic projection).
(Special positions where the circle plane contains point O are
omitted.)

These results can be understood if one recognizes that the projection process can be seen in two steps: 1) circle c and point O
generate a cone which is 2) cut by the image plane, in order to generate the image.
One sees a hyperbola whenever catching sight of a portion of a circle cut by one's lens plane. The inability to see very much of the
arms of the visible branch, combined with the complete absence of the second branch, makes it virtually impossible for the human
visual system to recognize the connection with hyperbolas.

Derived curves
Several other curves can be derived from the hyperbola by inversion, the so-called inverse
curves of the hyperbola. If the center of inversion is chosen as the hyperbola's own center,
the inverse curve is the lemniscate of Bernoulli; the lemniscate is also the envelope of circles
centered on a rectangular hyperbola and passing through the origin. If the center of
inversion is chosen at a focus or a vertex of the hyperbola, the resulting inverse curves are a
limaçon or a strophoid, respectively.

Elliptic coordinates
A family of confocal hyperbolas is the basis of the system of elliptic coordinates in two
dimensions. These hyperbolas are described by the equation

where the foci are located at a distance c from the origin on the x-axis, and where θ is the
angle of the asymptotes with the x-axis. Every hyperbola in this family is orthogonal to
every ellipse that shares the same foci. This orthogonality may be shown by a conformal
map of the Cartesian coordinate system w = z + 1/z, where z= x + iy are the original
Cartesian coordinates, and w=u + iv are those after the transformation. Sinusoidal spirals: equilateral
hyperbola (n = −2), line
Other orthogonal two-dimensional coordinate systems involving hyperbolas may be 1
(n = −1), parabola (n = − ),
2
obtained by other conformal mappings. For example, the mapping w = z2 transforms the 1
cardioid (n = ), circle (n = 1)
Cartesian coordinate system into two families of orthogonal hyperbolas. 2
and lemniscate of Bernoulli
(n = 2), where rn = −1n cos nθ
Other properties of hyperbolas in polar coordinates and their
equivalents in rectangular
The following are concurrent: (1) a circle passing through the hyperbola's foci and coordinates.
centered at the hyperbola's center; (2) either of the lines that are tangent to the
hyperbola at the vertices; and (3) either of the asymptotes of the hyperbola.[14][15]
The following are also concurrent: (1) the circle that is centered at the hyperbola's center and that passes through the
hyperbola's vertices; (2) either directrix; and (3) either of the asymptotes.[15]

Hyperbolic functions
Just as the trigonometric functions are defined in terms of the unit circle, so also the hyperbolic functions are defined in terms of
the unit hyperbola, as shown in this diagram.

Applications

Sundials
Hyperbolas may be seen in many sundials. On any given day, the sun revolves in a circle on the celestial sphere, and its rays striking
the point on a sundial traces out a cone of light. The intersection of this cone with the horizontal plane of the ground forms a conic
section. At most populated latitudes and at most times of the year, this conic section is a hyperbola. In practical terms, the shadow
of the tip of a pole traces out a hyperbola on the ground over the course of a day (this path is called the declination line). The shape
of this hyperbola varies with the geographical latitude and with the time of the year, since those factors affect the cone of the sun's
rays relative to the horizon. The collection of such hyperbolas for a whole year at a given location was called a pelekinon by the
Greeks, since it resembles a double-bladed axe.
Multilateration
A hyperbola is the basis for solving multilateration problems, the task of
locating a point from the differences in its distances to given points — or,
equivalently, the difference in arrival times of synchronized signals
between the point and the given points. Such problems are important in
navigation, particularly on water; a ship can locate its position from the
difference in arrival times of signals from a LORAN or GPS transmitters.
Conversely, a homing beacon or any transmitter can be located by
comparing the arrival times of its signals at two separate receiving stations;
such techniques may be used to track objects and people. In particular, the
set of possible positions of a point that has a distance difference of 2a from
two given points is a hyperbola of vertex separation 2a whose foci are the
two given points.
A ray through the unit hyperbola
in the point , where is twice
Path followed by a particle the area between the ray, the hyperbola, and the
-axis. For points on the hyperbola below the -
The path followed by any particle in the classical Kepler problem is a conic axis, the area is considered negative.
section. In particular, if the total energy E of the particle is greater than
zero (i.e., if the particle is unbound), the path of such a particle is a
hyperbola. This property is useful in studying atomic and sub-atomic forces by
scattering high-energy particles; for example, the Rutherford experiment demonstrated
the existence of an atomic nucleus by examining the scattering of alpha particles from
gold atoms. If the short-range nuclear interactions are ignored, the atomic nucleus and
the alpha particle interact only by a repulsive Coulomb force, which satisfies the inverse
square law requirement for a Kepler problem.

Korteweg–de Vries equation Hyperbolas as declination lines on a

The hyperbolic trig function appears as one solution to the Korteweg–de Vries sundial
equation which describes the motion of a soliton wave in a canal.

Angle trisection
As shown first by Apollonius of Perga, a hyperbola can be used to trisect any angle, a
well studied problem of geometry. Given an angle, first draw a circle centered at its
vertex O, which intersects the sides of the angle at points A and B. Next draw the line
segment with endpoints A and B and its perpendicular bisector . Construct a hyperbola
of eccentricity e=2 with as directrix and B as a focus. Let P be the intersection (upper)
of the hyperbola with the circle. Angle POB trisects angle AOB.

To prove this, reflect the line segment OP about the line obtaining the point P' as the
image of P. Segment AP' has the same length as segment BP due to the reflection, while
segment PP' has the same length as segment BP due to the eccentricity of the
hyperbola. As OA, OP', OP and OB are all radii of the same circle (and so, have the
same length), the triangles OAP', OPP' and OPB are all congruent. Therefore, the Trisecting an angle (AOB) using a
angle has been trisected, since 3×POB = AOB.[16] hyperbola of eccentricity 2 (yellow
curve)

Efficient portfolio frontier

In portfolio theory, the locus of mean-variance efficient portfolios (called the efficient frontier) is the upper half of the east-opening
branch of a hyperbola drawn with the portfolio return's standard deviation plotted horizontally and its expected value plotted
vertically; according to this theory, all rational investors would choose a portfolio characterized by some point on this locus.
Hyperbolas as plane sections of quadrics
Hyperbolas appear as plane sections of the following quadrics:

Elliptic cone
Hyperbolic cylinder
Hyperbolic paraboloid
Hyperboloid of one sheet
Hyperboloid of two sheets

Elliptic cone Hyperbolic cylinder Hyperbolic paraboloid Hyperboloid of one

sheet

Hyperboloid of two
sheets

See also

Other conic sections

Circle
Ellipse
Parabola
Degenerate conic

Other related topics

Elliptic coordinates, an orthogonal coordinate system based on families of ellipses and hyperbolas.
Hyperbolic growth
Hyperbolic partial differential equation
Hyperbolic sector
Hyperbolic structure
Hyperbolic trajectory
Hyperboloid
Multilateration
Rotation of axes
Translation of axes
Unit hyperbola
Notes
1. Heath, Sir Thomas Little (1896), "Chapter I. The discovery of conic sections. Menaechmus", Apollonius of Perga: Treatise on
Conic Sections with Introductions Including an Essay on Earlier History on the Subject (https://books.google.com/books?hl=en
&lr=&id=B0k0AQAAMAAJ&pg=PR17), Cambridge University Press, pp. xvii–xxx.
2. Boyer, Carl B.; Merzbach, Uta C. (2011), A History of Mathematics (https://books.google.com/books?id=bR9HAAAAQBAJ&pg=
RA2-PT73), Wiley, p. 73, ISBN 9780470630563, "It was Apollonius (possibly following up a suggestion of Archimedes) who
introduced the names "ellipse" and "hyperbola" in connection with these curves."
3. Eves, Howard (1963), A Survey of Geometry (Vol. One), Allyn and Bacon, pp. 30–31
4. Apostol, Tom M.; Mnatsakanian, Mamikon A. (2012), New Horizons in Geometry, The Dolciani Mathematical Expositions #47,
The Mathematical Association of America, p. 251, ISBN 978-0-88385-354-2
5. The German term for this circle is Leitkreis which can be translated as "Director circle", but that term has a different meaning in
the English literature (see Director circle).
6. Mitchell, Douglas W., "A property of hyperbolas and their asymptotes", Mathematical Gazette 96, July 2012, 299–301.
7. J. W. Downs, Practical Conic Sections, Dover Publ., 2003 (orig. 1993): p. 26.
8. E. Hartmann: Lecture Note 'Planar Circle Geometries', an Introduction to Möbius-, Laguerre- and Minkowski Planes, p. 93 (ht
tp://www.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de/~ehartmann/circlegeom.pdf)
9. W. Benz: Vorlesungen über Geomerie der Algebren, Springer (1973)
10. Lecture Note Planar Circle Geometries, an Introduction to Moebius-, Laguerre- and Minkowski Planes (http://www.mathematik.
tu-darmstadt.de/~ehartmann/circlegeom.pdf), S. 33, (PDF; 757 kB)
11. Lecture Note Planar Circle Geometries, an Introduction to Moebius-, Laguerre- and Minkowski Planes (http://www.mathematik.
tu-darmstadt.de/~ehartmann/circlegeom.pdf), S. 32, (PDF; 757 kB)
12. Fanchi, John R. (2006), Math refresher for scientists and engineers (https://books.google.com/books?id=75mAJPcAWT8C),
John Wiley and Sons, pp. 44–45, ISBN 0-471-75715-2, Section 3.2, page 45 (https://books.google.com/books?id=75mAJPcA
WT8C&pg=PA45)
13. Korn, Granino A. and Korn, Theresa M. Mathematical Handbook for Scientists and Engineers: Definitions, Theorems, and
Formulas for Reference and Review, Dover Publ., second edition, 2000: p. 40.
14. "Hyperbola" (http://mathafou.free.fr/themes_en/hyperb.html). Mathafou.free.fr. Retrieved 26 August 2018.
15. [1] (http://www.ul.ie/~rynnet/swconics/HP%27s.htm)
16. This construction is due to Pappus of Alexandria (circa 300 A.D.) and the proof comes from Kazarinoff (1970, pg. 62).

References
Kazarinoff, Nicholas D. (2003), Ruler and the Round, Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, ISBN 0-486-42515-0

External links
Hazewinkel, Michiel, ed. (2001) [1994], "Hyperbola" (https://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php?title=p/h048230),
Encyclopedia of Mathematics, Springer Science+Business Media B.V. / Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 978-1-55608-010-
4
Apollonius' Derivation of the Hyperbola (https://web.archive.org/web/20070625162103/http://mathdl.maa.org/convergence/1/?p
a=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=196&bodyId=204) at Convergence (https://web.archive.org/web/20070713083148/htt
p://mathdl.maa.org/convergence/1/)
"Unit hyperbola" (http://planetmath.org/?op=getobj&from=objects&id=5996). PlanetMath.
"Conic section" (http://planetmath.org/?op=getobj&from=objects&id=3584). PlanetMath.
"Conjugate hyperbola" (http://planetmath.org/?op=getobj&from=objects&id=6241). PlanetMath.
Weisstein, Eric W. "Hyperbola" (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hyperbola.html). MathWorld.

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