Guagua National Colleges

Guagua Pampanga
G.N.C Montessori

Pre-Calculus

The History of
Circle and Parabola
Submitted To: Norman Punla Santos

Submitted By: Justin Gabriel T. Miranda

Definition of Circle

A circle is a simple closed shape. It is the set of all points in a plane that are at a given
distance from a given point, the centre; equivalently it is the curve traced out by a point
that moves in a plane so that its distance from a given point is constant. The distance
between any of the points and the centre is called the radius. This article is about circles
in Euclidean geometry, and, in particular, the Euclidean plane, except where otherwise
noted.

A circle (black), which is measured by its circumference (C), diameter (D) in cyan, and
radius (R) in red; its centre (O) is in magenta.

A circle is a simple closed curve that divides the plane into two regions: an interior and
an exterior. In everyday use, the term "circle" may be used interchangeably to refer to
either the boundary of the figure, or to the whole figure including its interior; in strict
technical usage, the circle is only the boundary and the whole figure is called a disc.

A circle may also be defined as a special kind of ellipse in which the two foci are
coincident and the eccentricity is 0, or the two-dimensional shape enclosing the most
area per unit perimeter squared.
History of Circle.
History of Circle

The compass in this 13th-century manuscript is a symbol of God's act of Creation.

Notice also the circular shape of the halo.

The word circle derives from the Greek κίρκος/κύκλος (kirkos/kuklos), itself a
metathesis of the Homeric Greek κρίκος (krikos), meaning "hoop" or "ring".The origins
of the words circus and circuit are closely related.

Circles in an old Arabic astronomical drawing.

The circle has been known since before the beginning of recorded history. Natural
circles would have been observed, such as the Moon, Sun, and a short plant stalk
blowing in the wind on sand, which forms a circle shape in the sand. The circle is the
basis for the wheel, which, with related inventions such as gears, makes much of
modern machinery possible. In mathematics, the study of the circle has helped inspire
the development of geometry, astronomy and calculus.

Early science, particularly geometry and astrology and astronomy, was connected to the
divine for most medieval scholars, and many believed that there was something
intrinsically "divine" or "perfect" that could be found in circles.
Some highlights in the history of the circle are:
 1700 BCE – The Rhind papyrus gives a method to find the area of a circular field.
The result corresponds to 256/81 (3.16049…) as an approximate value of π.
 300 BCE – Book of 3 Euclid’s Elements deals with the properties of circles.
 In Plato's Seventh Letter there is a detailed definition and explanation of the
circle. Plato explains the perfect circle, and how it is different from any drawing,
words, definition or explanation.

1880 CE – Lindemann proves that π is transcendental, effectively settling the
millennia-old problem of squaring the circle.

Tughrul Tower from inside.

Euclid’s definition

A circle is a plane figure bounded by one line, and such that all right lines drawn from a
certain point within it to the bounding line, are equal. The bounding line is called its
circumference and the point, its centre.

Terminology
 Annulus: a ring-shaped object, the region bounded by two concentric circles.

 Arc: any connected part of a circle. Specifying two end points of an arc and a
center allows for two arcs that together make up a full circle.

 Centre: the point equidistant from all points on the circle.

 Chord: a line segment whose endpoints lie on the circle, thus dividing a circle in
two sements.

 Circumference: the length of one circuit along the circle, or the distance around
the circle.

 Diameter: a line segment whose endpoints lie on the circle and that passes
through the centre; or the length of such a line segment. This is the largest
 distance between any two points on the circle. It is a special case of a chord,
namely the longest chord for a given circle, and its length is twice the length of a
radius.

 Disc: the region of the plane bounded by a circle.

 Lens: the region common to (the intersection of) two overlapping discs.

 Passant: a coplanar straight line that has no point in common with the circle.

 Radius: a line segment joining the centre of a circle with any single point on the
circle itself; or the length of such a segment, which is half (the length of) a
diameter.

 Sector: a region bounded by two radii of equal length with a common center and
either of the two possible arcs, determined by this center and the endpoints of
the radii.

 Segment: a region bounded by a chord and one of the arcs connecting the chord's
endpoints. The length of the chord imposes a lower boundary on the diameter of
possible arcs. Sometimes the term segment is used only for regions not
containing the center of the circle to which their arc belongs to.

 Secant: an extended chord, a coplanar straight line, intersecting a circle in two

points.

 Semicircle: one of the two possible arcs determined by the endpoints of a

diameter, taking its midpoint as center. In non-technical common usage it may
mean the interior of the two dimensional region bounded by a diameter and one
of its arcs, that is technically called a half-disc. A half-disc is a special case of a
segment, namely the largest one.

 Tangent: a coplanar straight line that has one single point in common with a
circle ("touches the circle at this point").
All of the specified regions may be considered as open, that is, not containing their
boundaries, or as closed, including their respective boundaries.

Chord, secant, tangent, radius, and diameter Arc, sector, and segment
Definition of Parabola

In mathematics, a parabola is a plane curve that is mirror-symmetrical and is

approximately U-shaped. It fits several superficially different other mathematical
descriptions, which can all be proved to define exactly the same curves.

Part of a parabola (blue), with various features (other colours). The complete parabola
has no endpoints. In this orientation, it extends infinitely to the left, right, and upward.

One description of a parabola involves a point (the focus) and a line (the directrix). The
focus does not lie on the directrix. The parabola is the locus of points in that plane that
are equidistant from both the directrix and the focus. Another description of a parabola
is as a conic section, created from the intersection of a right circular conical surface and a
plane which is parallel to another plane that is tangential to the conical surface.

The line perpendicular to the directrix and passing through the focus (that is, the line that
splits the parabola through the middle) is called the "axis of symmetry". The point on the
parabola that intersects the axis of symmetry is called the "vertex", and is the point where
the parabola is most sharply curved. The distance between the vertex and the focus,
measured along the axis of symmetry, is the "focal length". The "latus rectum" is the chord
of the parabola which is parallel to the directrix and passes through the focus. Parabolas
can open up, down, left, right, or in some other arbitrary direction. Any parabola can be
repositioned and rescaled to fit exactly on any other parabola—that is, all parabolas are
geometrically similar.

Parabolas have the property that, if they are made of material that reflects light, then light
which travels parallel to the axis of symmetry of a parabola and strikes its concave side
is reflected to its focus, regardless of where on the parabola the reflection occurs.
Conversely, light that originates from a point source at the focus is reflected into a parallel
("collimated") beam, leaving the parabola parallel to the axis of symmetry. The same
effects occur with sound and other forms of energy. This reflective property is the basis
of many practical uses of parabolas.

The parabola has many important applications, from a parabolic antenna or parabolic
microphone to automobile headlight reflectors to the design of ballistic missiles. They
are frequently used in physics, engineering, and many other areas.

The parabola is a member of the family of conic sections.

History of Parabola

Parabolic compass designed by Leonardo da Vinci

The earliest known work on conic sections was by Menaechmus in the fourth century BC.
He discovered a way to solve the problem of doubling the cube using parabolas. (The
solution, however, does not meet the requirements of compass-and-straightedge
construction.) The area enclosed by a parabola and a line segment, the so-called "parabola
segment", was computed by Archimedes via the method of exhaustion in the third
century BC, in his The Quadrature of the Parabola. The name "parabola" is due to
Apollonius who discovered many properties of conic sections. It means "application",
referring to "application of areas" concept, that has a connection with this curve, as
Apollonius had proved. The focus–directrix property of the parabola and other conic
sections is due to Pappus.

Galileo showed that the path of a projectile follows a parabola, a consequence of uniform
acceleration due to gravity.

The idea that a parabolic reflector could produce an image was already well known
before the invention of the reflecting telescope.Designs were proposed in the early to mid
seventeenth century by many mathematicians including René Descartes, Marin
Mersenne, and James Gregory.When Isaac Newton built the first reflecting telescope in
1668, he skipped using a parabolic mirror because of the difficulty of fabrication, opting
for a spherical mirror. Parabolic mirrors are used in most modern reflecting telescopes
and in satellite dishes and radar receivers.
Definition as a locus of points

A parabola can be defined geometrically as a set of points (locus of points) in the

Euclidean plane:

 A parabola is a set of points, such that for any point of the set the distance to a
fixed point, the focus, is equal to the distance to a fixed line, the directrix:

The midpoint of the perpendicular from the focus onto the directrix is called vertex and
the line FV the axis of symmetry of the parabola.

As a graph of a function

Parabolas y = ax2

The previous section shows: any parabola with the origin as vertex and the y-axis as axis of
symmetry can be considered as the graph of a function.
f(x) = ax2 with