I feel this is (yet another:rolleyes: )area that I need to work on and familiarise myself with in maths. I know about conic sections, what they are; hyperbolae, parabolae, ellipses etc, and I have a very rough idea but not a working memory of the formulas that can describe their functions in a Cartesian coordinate plane.

 

In order to understand them better and to gain some personal satisfaction for myself that I do; I would like to derive the formulas. I have already looked on the Internet for something of the sort, but I don't feel I have found what I was looking for. I intend to get an elementary geometry book so I can revise my knowledge of this and other related areas soon.

 

In the mean time however, I would like to ask if anyone knows proofs or derivations of these formulas, and if so, could they kindly try and explain them to me? Alternatively, I would be very grateful if someone could point me in the direction of a resource that does address the issues I have.

 

Thanks in advance:-)

Did you try this:

http://www.math.com/tables/algebra/conics.htm

 

or this:

http://xahlee.org/SpecialPlaneCurves_dir/ConicSections_dir/conicSections.html

I think I may have seen the first site, but it seems to just list the formulae like other sites rather than explain and derive them. Thanks for the 2nd site though;) . I would still be willing to look at others as well, if anyone else can offer resources they think will be good on the subject of this thread.

Not sure if this helps...http://www.ping.be/~ping1339/conics.htm

Not sure if this helps...http://www.ping.be/~ping1339/conics.htm

 

I think thats generally more advanced than what I was looking for. Basically, I know the geometric definition for the basic conic sections, and I know, or I can find the algebraic formulae to represent them on a plane(not going 3d yet!). What I want to do is be able to relate the 2 and therefore derive the algebra using the geometric notions as starting points.