Conic Section

conic section, also called conic, in geometry, any curve produced by the intersection of a plane and a right circular cone. Depending on the angle of the plane relative to the cone, the intersection is a circle, an ellipse, a hyperbola, or a parabola. Special (degenerate) cases of intersection occur when the plane passes through only the apex (producing a single point) or through the apex and another point on the cone (producing one straight line or two intersecting straight lines). See the figure.

The basic descriptions, but not the names, of the conic sections can be traced to Menaechmus (flourished c. 350 bc), a pupil of both Plato and Eudoxus of Cnidus. Apollonius of Perga (c. 262–190 bc), known as the “Great Geometer,” gave the conic sections their names and was the first to define the two branches of the hyperbola (which presuppose the double cone). Apollonius’s eight-volume treatise on the conic sections, Conics, is one of the greatest scientific works from the ancient world.