Graph of the equation y = ax2 + bx + c

Usage examples of parabola.

Fireworks, a rocket in a silver arc, white actinic fire in high parabola, its origin somewhere to the left, its terminus twenty yards behind Johan Schmidt.

On each cane shaft, tied behind the iron arrowhead, was a tuft of unravelled hemp rope that had been soaked in pitch, which spluttered and then burned fiercely when touched with the slow-match, The archers loosed their arrows, which sailed up in a high, flaming parabola and dropped down to peg into the timbers of an anchored vessel.

The flame drew a parabola down the darkened air and disappeared into the open trap of the biogas chamber.

A parabola, an arc such that each point is equally distant from a directrix and focus.

The imaginary parabola collapsed as the rushing wind seemed to roll the crippled hippogriff completely over.

And when my eyes cleared I saw people fighting, chairs hurling themselves in perfect parabolas through the air, members of the political parties pouncing on one another.

From which position she was ideally placed to see Rollo race from the trees in a long, low streak and launch himself in an arching parabola from the top of the bank.

Every few minutes a volley of leaping bonito would burst through the surface and arc in glittering silver parabolas through the brilliant tropical sunshine.

It soared away in a splendid parabola, struck the pavilion roof with a noise like the crack of doom, rattled down the galvanized iron roofing, bounced into the enclosure where the scorers were sitting and broke a bottle of lemonade.

Two dark parabolas in a field of yellow, slight 3-D interest provided by the scurf strewn about.

He saw above him, in the clearness of the storm-scoured waning day, what appeared to be a golden structure rising from the summit, its shape a reassuring and infinitely calming sweep of dual archlike parabolas.

He did that several times, the board giving him extra altitude and a longer parabola in which to do his fantastic capers and head-to-toe backbends and legs-apart splits in midair.

The kid arched, half of him still following the parabola of his swing while the other half tried to bend away from Joe, who hit the coralroot scar again and continued to move in, staying low, pursuing the softening, collapsing midsection.

The three lightly dotted parabolas are the curves of maximum moment for each of the loads taken separately.

But he knew its shape intimately already, that of a Spenglerian parabola.