Unit
Conic Sections
MA, Stanford University
Teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area
Alissa is currently a teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area and Brightstorm users love her clear, concise explanations of tough concepts
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MA, Stanford University
Teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area
Alissa is currently a teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area and Brightstorm users love her clear, concise explanations of tough concepts
The distance from the center to a vertex is "a," and the distance from the center to a covertex is called "b." The vertex will always be on the major axis, and the covertex will always be on the minor axis, so we can use their coordinates to determine whether the ellipse is "surfboard style" (vertical major axis and x^2 term over b^2) or "hamburger style" (horizontal major axis and x^2 over a^2.) An ellipse equation in standard form will always equal one.
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