User:MichelleGutmanis

My short name is Micha (pronounced me-sha). I am in the Faculty of Forestry and love it, but I am considering switching to Environmental Science next year.

Parabolae in Our Lives

Golfball trajectories, water fountains, roller coasters, and swing sets can all be represented by a parabola. Parabolae, a conic section, was first studied by a Greek mathematician named Menaechmus. A conic section is a curve acquired by intersecting a cone with a plane. Menaechmus first came across the parabola by trying to design a way to duplicate the cube, particularly to find the side of a cube that has a volume double that of a given cube. Even though he did not actually name the ‘parabola’, the equation that Menaechmus came up with was: ax² + bx + c, where a, b, and c affect the shape and location and can not be equal to zero. A parabola can be shifted, stretched, compressed, flipped, and translated. Parabolas are one of the most commonly studied subjects in mathematics, and are involved with our everyday lives. When your finished reading my essay and throw your laptop across the room, that can be an example of parabolic motion.

Citations: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Curves/Parabola.html