Conic Sections

The term conic section is used to describe the curves that include circles, parabolas, ellipses and hyperbolas. These conic sections have their own equations, their own shapes, and can be transformed.

The intersection of a double cone and a plane is called a conic section. Above you can see how a circle, ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola are created. Let’s take a closer look at each of these conic sections. We will begin our discussion of conic sections by describing the basic, not transformed, general equation of each conic section and their general shape. In future sections we will discuss what happens to the conic sections as they are transformed.