Hyperbola in the context of "Apollonius of Perga"

In geometry, a paraboloid is a quadric surface that has exactly one axis of symmetry and no center of symmetry. The term "paraboloid" is derived from parabola, which refers to a conic section that has a similar property of symmetry.

Every plane section of a paraboloid made by a plane parallel to the axis of symmetry is a parabola. The paraboloid is hyperbolic if every other plane section is either a hyperbola, or two crossing lines (in the case of a section by a tangent plane). The paraboloid is elliptic if every other nonempty plane section is either an ellipse, or a single point (in the case of a section by a tangent plane). A paraboloid is either elliptic or hyperbolic.

In geometry, a hyperboloid of revolution, sometimes called a circular hyperboloid, is the surface generated by rotating a hyperbola around one of its principal axes. A hyperboloid is the surface obtained from a hyperboloid of revolution by deforming it by means of directional scalings, or more generally, of an affine transformation.

A hyperboloid is a quadric surface, that is, a surface defined as the zero set of a polynomial of degree two in three variables. Among quadric surfaces, a hyperboloid is characterized by not being a cone or a cylinder, having a center of symmetry, and intersecting many planes into hyperbolas. A hyperboloid has three pairwise perpendicular axes of symmetry, and three pairwise perpendicular planes of symmetry.

A conic section, conic or a quadratic curve is a curve obtained from a cone's surface intersecting a plane. The three types of conic section are the hyperbola, the parabola, and the ellipse; the circle is a special case of the ellipse, though it was sometimes considered a fourth type. The ancient Greek mathematicians studied conic sections, culminating around 200 BC with Apollonius of Perga's systematic work on their properties.

The conic sections in the Euclidean plane have various distinguishing properties, many of which can be used as alternative definitions. One such property defines a non-circular conic to be the set of those points whose distances to some particular point, called a focus, and some particular line, called a directrix, are in a fixed ratio, called the eccentricity. The type of conic is determined by the value of the eccentricity. In analytic geometry, a conic may be defined as a plane algebraic curve of degree 2; that is, as the set of points whose coordinates satisfy a quadratic equation in two variables which can be written in the form ${\displaystyle Ax^{2}+Bxy+Cy^{2}+Dx+Ey+F=0.}$ The geometric properties of the conic can be deduced from its equation.

In astrodynamics, the orbital eccentricity of an astronomical object is a dimensionless parameter that determines the amount by which its orbit around another body deviates from a perfect circle. A value of 0 is a circular orbit, values between 0 and 1 form an elliptic orbit, 1 is a parabolic (escape orbit or capture orbit), and greater than 1 is a hyperbola. The term derives its name from the parameters of conic sections, as every Kepler orbit is a conic section. It is normally used for the isolated two-body problem, but extensions exist for objects following a rosette orbit through the Galaxy.

In geometry, focuses or foci (/ˈfoʊsaɪ/ or /ˈfoʊkaɪ/; sg.: focus) are special points with reference to which any of a variety of curves is constructed. For example, one or two foci can be used in defining conic sections, the four types of which are the circle, ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola. In addition, two foci are used to define the Cassini oval and the Cartesian oval, and more than two foci are used in defining an n-ellipse.

In mathematics, the eccentricity of a conic section is a non-negative real number that uniquely characterizes its shape.One can think of the eccentricity as a measure of how much a conic section deviates from being circular. In particular:

• The eccentricity of a circle is 0.
• The eccentricity of a non-circular ellipse is between 0 and 1.
• The eccentricity of a parabola is 1.
• The eccentricity of a hyperbola is greater than 1.
• The eccentricity of a pair of lines is ${\displaystyle \infty .}$