Word Finder - conic

definition

A conic section.

definition

Of or relating to a cone or cones.

definition

Shaped like a cone.

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Describing a map projection in which meridians are mapped to equally spaced lines radiating out from the apex and parallels of latitude are mapped to circular arcs centred on the apex.

John Casey, professor of mathematics at the Catholic university of Dublin, has given elementary demonstrations founded on the theory of similitude and coaxal circles which are reproduced in his Sequel to Euclid; an analytical solution by Gergonne is given in Salmon's Conic Sections.

It is therefore a conic section having its eccentricity equal to unity.

Cubic equations were solved geometrically by determining the intersections of conic sections.

In projective geometry it may be defined as the conic which intersects the line at infinity in two real points, or to which it is possible to draw two real tangents from the centre.

The same name is also given to the first positive pedal of any central conic. When the conic is a rectangular hyperbola, the curve is the lemniscate of Bernoulli previously described.

If the attraction of a central body is not the only force acting on the moving body, the orbit will deviate from the form of a conic section in a degree depending on the amount of the extraneous force; and the curve described may not be a re-entering curve at all, but one winding around so as to form an indefinite succession of spires.

The northern part of Eure-et-Loir is watered by the Eure, with its tributaries the Vegre, Blaise and Avre, a small western portion by the Huisne, and the south by the Loir with its tributaries the Conic and the Ozanne.

The Arabians more closely resembled the Hindus than the Greeks in the choice of studies; their philosophers blended speculative dissertations with the more progressive study of medicine; their mathematicians neglected the subtleties of the conic sections and Diophantine analysis, and applied themselves more particularly to perfect the system of numerals, arithmetic and astronomy.

He improved the methods for solving equations, and devised geometrical constructions with the aid of the conic sections.

The founder of the mathematical school was the celebrated Euclid (Eucleides); among its scholars were Archimedes; Apollonius of Perga, author of a treatise on Conic Sections; Eratosthenes, to whom we owe the first measurement of the earth; and Hipparchus, the founder of the epicyclical theory of the heavens, afterwards called the Ptolemaic system, from its most famous expositor, Claudius Ptolemaeus.

Archytas of Tarentum (c. 430 B.C.) solved the problems by means of sections of a half cylinder; according to Eutocius, Menaechmus solved them by means of the intersections of conic sections; and Eudoxus also gave a solution.

It is the inverse of a central conic for the focus, and the first positive pedal of a circle for any point.

The line la+ma+ny is the radical axis, and since as+43 c-y =o is the line infinity, it is obvious that equation (I) represents a conic passing through the circular points, i.e.

This problem, also termed the " Apollonian problem," was demonstrated with the aid of conic sections by Apollonius in his book on Contacts or Tangencies; geometrical solutions involving the conic sections were also given by Adrianus Romanus, Vieta, Newton and others.

The generality of treatment is indeed remarkable; he gives as the fundamental property of all the conics the equivalent of the Cartesian equation referred to oblique axes (consisting of a diameter and the tangent at its extremity) obtained by cutting an oblique circular cone in any manner, and the axes appear only as a particular case after he has shown that the property of the conic can be expressed in the same form with reference to any new diameter and the tangent at its extremity.

In one solution of the former problem is the first recorded use of the property of a conic (a hyperbola) with reference to the focus and directrix.

The first three books of this treatise were translated into English, and several times printed as The Elements of the Conic Sections.

There are wonderful stories on record of his precocity in mathematical learning, which is sufficiently established by the well-attested fact that he had completed before he was sixteen years of age a work on the conic sections, in which he had laid down a series of propositions, discovered by himself, of such importance that they may be said to form the foundations of the modern treatment of that subject.

In this way he established the famous theorem that the intersections of the three pairs of opposite sides of a hexagon inscribed in a conic are collinear.

For the subjects under this heading see the articles CONIC SECTIONS; CIRCLE; CURVE; GEOMETRICAL CONTINUITY; GEOMETRY, Axioms of; GEOMETRY, Euclidean; GEOMETRY, Projective; GEOMETRY, Analytical; GEOMETRY, Line; KNOTS, MATHEMATICAL THEORY OF; MENSURATION; MODELS; PROJECTION; Surface; Trigonometry.

The meteors, whatever their dimensions, must have motions around the sun in obedience to the law of gravitation in the same manner as planets and comets - that is, in conic sections of which the sun is always at one focus.

Apollonius' genius takes its highest flight in Book v., where he treats of normals as minimum and maximum straight lines drawn from given points to the curve (independently of tangent properties), discusses how many normals can be drawn from particular points, finds their feet by construction, and gives propositions determining the centre of curvature at any point and leading at once to the Cartesian equation of the evolute of any conic.

The general relations between the parabola, ellipse and hyperbola are treated in the articles Geometry, Analytical, and Conic Sections; and various projective properties are demonstrated in the article Geometry, Projective.

Try = o to be a parabola is lbc+mca+nab = o, and the conic for which the triangle of reference is self-conjugate la 2 +143 2 +n7 2 =o is a 2 inn--+b 2 nl+c 2 lm=o.

The various forms in areal co-ordinates may be derived from the above by substituting Xa for 1, µb for m and vc for n, or directly by expressing the condition for tangency of the line x+y+z = o to the conic expressed in areal coordinates.

See the bibliography to the articles Conic Sections; Geometry, Analytical; and Geometry, Projective.

James Gregory, in his Optica Promota (1663), discusses the forms of images and objects produced by lenses and mirrors, and shows that when the surfaces of the lenses or mirrors are portions of spheres the images are curves concave towards the objective, but if the curves of the surfaces are conic sections the spherical aberration is corrected.

Thus Whewell mistook Kepler's inference that Mars moves in an ellipse for an induction, though it required the combination of Tycho's and Kepler's observations, as a minor, with the laws of conic sections discovered by the Greeks, as a major, premise.

If the roof be not horizontal, we may obtain in this way any form of conic section.

Now in a conic whose focus is at 0 we have where 1 is half the latus-rectum, a is half the major axis, and the upper or lower sign is to be taken according as the conic is an ellipse or hyperbola.

This is recognized as the polar equation of a conic referred to the focus, the half latus-rectum being hf/u.

Thus for a circular orbit with the centre of force at an excentric point, the hodograph is a conic with the pole as focus.

Hence the meridian section of the film may be traced by the focus of such a conic, if the conic is made to roll on the axis.

When the conic is an ellipse the meridian line is in the form of a series of waves, and the film itself has a series of alternate swellings and contractions as represented in figs.

In all these cases the internal pressure exceeds the external by 2T/a where a is the semi-transverse axis of the conic. The resultant of the internal pressure and the surface-tension is equivalent to a tension along the axis, and the numerical value of this tension is equal to the force due to the action of this pressure on a circle whose diameter is equal to the conjugate axis of the ellipse.

In the first volume Of the Entwickelungen he applied the method of abridged notation to the straight line, circle and conic sections, and he subsequently used it with great effect in many of his researches, notably in his theory of cubic curves.

As Apollo Agyieus he was shown by a simple conic pillar; the Apollo of Amyclae was a pillar of bronze surmounted by a helmeted head, with extended arms carrying lance and bow.

A curve of the second order is a conic, and is also called a quadric curve; and conversely every conic is a curve of the second order or quadric curve.

Stating the theorem in regard to a conic, we have a real point P (called the pole) and a real line XY (called the polar), the line joining the two (real or imaginary) points of contact of the (real or imaginary) tangents drawn from the point to the conic; and the theorem is that when the point describes a line the line passes through a point, this line and point being polar and pole to each other.

The points in question have since been called (it is believed first by Dr George Salmon) the circular points at infinity, or they may be called the circular points; these are also frequently spoken of as the points I, J; and we have thus the circle characterized as a conic which passes through the two circular points at infinity; the number of conditions thus imposed upon the conic is = 2, and there remain three arbitrary constants, which is the right number for the circle.

Secondly, as to the inflections, the process is a similar one; it can be shown that the inflections are the intersections of the curve by a derivative curve called (after Ludwig Otto Hesse who first considered it) the Hessian, defined geometrically as the locus of a point such that its conic polar (§ 8 below) in regard to the curve breaks up into a pair of lines, and which has an equation H = o, where H is the determinant formed with the second differential coefficients of u in regard to the variables (x, y, z); H= o is thus a curve of the order 3 (m - 2), and the number of inflections is =3m(m-2).

By means of Pliicker's equations we may form a table - The table is arranged according to the value of in; and we have m=o, n= r, the point; m =1, n =o, the line; m=2, n=2, the conic; of m = 3, the cubic, there are three cases, the class being 6, 4 or 3, according as the curve is without singularities, or as it has 1 node or r cusp; and so of m =4, the quartic, there are ten cases, where observe that in two of them the class is = 6, - the reduction of class arising from two cusps or else from three nodes.

The epithets hyperbolic and parabolic are of course derived from the conic hyperbola and parabola respectively.

The two legs of a parabolic branch may converge to ultimate parallelism, as in the conic parabola, or diverge to ultimate parallelism, as in the semi-cubical parabola y 2 = x 3, and the branch is said to be convergent, or divergent, accordingly; or they may tend to parallelism in opposite senses, as in the cubical parabola y = x 3 .

A circuit is met by any right line always in an even number, or always in an odd number, of points, and it is said to be an even circuit or an odd circuit accordingly; the right line is an odd circuit, the conic an even circuit.

We may consider in relation to a curve, not only the line infinity, but also the circular points at infinity; assuming the curve to be real, these present themselves always conjointly; thus a circle is a conic passing through the two circular points, and is thereby distinguished from other conics.

A line became continuous, returning into itself by way of infinity; two parallel lines intersect in a point at infinity; all circles pass through two fixed points at infinity (the circular points); two spheres intersect in a fixed circle at infinity; an asymptote became a tangent at infinity; the foci of a conic became the intersections of the tangents from the circular points at infinity; the centre of a conic the pole of the line at infinity, &c. In analytical geometry the line at infinity plays an important part in trilinear co-ordinates.

The relation of the ellipse to the other conic sections is treated in the articles Conic Section and Geometry; in this article a summary of the properties of the curve will be given.

One definition, which is of especial value in the geometrical treatment of the conic sections (ellipse, parabola and hyperbola) in piano, is that a conic is the locus of a point whose distances from a fixed point (termed the focus) and a fixed line (the directrix) are in constant ratio.

This ratio, known as the eccentricity, determines the nature of the curve; if it be greater than unity, the conic is a hyperbola; if equal to unity, a parabola; and if less than unity, an ellipse.