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Chapter 15: Analytic Geometry

Last updated

Jul 8, 2025
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- Section 14.6.2: Homework
- Section 15.1: The Ellipse

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dd65399ff901c7e4b5f07cc48b84f47be687e1e2 — *(a) Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE) (b) German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630)*

Videos

A Visual Introduction to Conic Sections

The Greek mathematician Menaechmus (c. 380 - c. 320 BCE) is generally credited with discovering the shapes formed by the intersection of a plane and a right circular cone. Depending on how he tilted the plane when it intersected the cone, he formed different shapes at the intersection–beautiful shapes with near-perfect symmetry.

It was also said that Aristotle may have had an intuitive understanding of these shapes, as he observed the orbit of the planet to be circular. He presumed that the planets moved in circular orbits around Earth, and for nearly 2000 years this was the commonly held belief.

It was not until the Renaissance movement that Johannes Kepler noticed that the orbits of the planet were not circular in nature. His published law of planetary motion in the 1600s changed our view of the solar system forever. He claimed that the sun was at one end of the orbits, and the planets revolved around the sun in an oval-shaped path.

In this chapter, we will investigate the two-dimensional figures that are formed when a right circular cone is intersected by a plane. We will begin by studying each of three figures created in this manner. We will develop defining equations for each figure and then learn how to use these equations to solve a variety of problems.

Section 15.1: The Ellipse
This section introduces ellipses as conic sections defined by the set of points where the sum of distances to two fixed points (foci) is constant. It covers standard forms of ellipse equations, distinguishing between horizontal and vertical orientations, and explains how to identify key features such as center, vertices, co-vertices, foci, axes, and eccentricity. The section also includes methods for graphing ellipses and solving related problems.
- Section 15.1.1: Resources and Key Concepts
- Section 15.1.2: Homework
Section 15.2: The Hyperbola
In analytic geometry, a hyperbola is a conic section formed by intersecting a right circular cone with a plane at an angle such that both halves of the cone are intersected. This intersection produces two separate unbounded curves that are mirror images of each other.
- Section 15.2.1: Resources and Key Concepts
- Section 15.2.2: Homework
Section 15.3: The Parabola
Like the ellipse and hyperbola, the parabola can also be defined by a set of points in the coordinate plane. A parabola is the set of all points in a plane that are the same distance from a fixed line, called the directrix, and a fixed point (the focus) not on the directrix.
- Section 15.3.1: Resources and Key Concepts
- Section 15.3.2: Homework

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