4 UNIT MATHEMATICS 3.5 CONIC SECTIONS Taking different slices through a cone you can create a circle, an ellipse, a parabola and a hyperbola. Theses conic sections are defined using a straight line (directrix ) and a point (focus ) where a is the conic section parameter. Consider any point on the conic section and the point on the directrix. The distances of these two points from the focus are and . The ratio is called the eccentricity and is a constant for e all conic sections eccentricity
4 UNIT MATHEMATICS 3.5 CONIC SECTIONS Taking different slices through a cone you can create a circle, an ellipse, a parabola and a hyperbola. Theses conic sections are defined using a straight line (directrix ) and a point (focus ) where a is the conic section parameter. Consider any point on the conic section and the point on the directrix. The distances of these two points from the focus are and . The ratio is called the eccentricity e and is a constant for all conic sections eccentricity
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