The parabola is one of the primary conic sections. In any engineering or mathematics application, we'll see a lot of applications:
- Describing projectile trajectory
- Designing vertical curves in roads and highways
- Making reflectors and telescope lenses.
These are a few examples of its many uses. For now, let's learn more about the basic geometry of the parabola:
Locus Definition
At its basic, it is a set of all points that is equidistant to:
- A fixed point
called the focus, - A fixed line called the directrix.
To expand, let's consider a point