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An open curve formed by a plane that cuts the base of a right circular cone
Answer for the clue "An open curve formed by a plane that cuts the base of a right circular cone ", 9 letters:
hyperbola
Alternative clues for the word hyperbola
Word definitions for hyperbola in dictionaries
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
Hyperbola \Hy*per"bo*la\, n. [Gr. ?, prop., an overshooting, excess, i. e., of the angle which the cutting plane makes with the base. See Hyperbole .] (Geom.) A curve formed by a section of a cone, when the cutting plane makes a greater angle with the base ...
Wiktionary
Word definitions in Wiktionary
n. (context geometry English) A conic section formed by the intersection of a cone with a plane that intersects the base of the cone and is not tangent to the cone.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Word definitions in Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1660s, from Latinized form of Greek hyperbole "extravagance," literally "a throwing beyond" (see hyperbole ). Perhaps so called because the inclination of the plane to the base of the cone exceeds that of the side of the cone.
Wikipedia
Word definitions in Wikipedia
In mathematics , a hyperbola (plural hyperbolas or hyperbolae ) is a type of smooth curve lying in a plane , defined by its geometric properties or by equations for which it is the solution set. A hyperbola has two pieces, called connected components or ...
WordNet
Word definitions in WordNet
n. an open curve formed by a plane that cuts the base of a right circular cone
Usage examples of hyperbola.
The abandoned Bussard ramjet crossed over the sun and curved inward, following a shallow hyperbola which would take it through the plane of the planets.
The ships followed a flat hyperbola across the planetless skies and transited to another new sky, this time a properly unfamiliar one.
They were startled by a sudden engine burn of two seconds, the ship responding to gravitometer feedback to the program governing their trajectory, a hyperbola in and out of the shock bubble.
It will not be captured, but the hyperbola of its orbit is narrow and it will come within an astronomical unit.
Apollonius of Perga, the mathematician who demonstrated the forms of the conic sections* - ellipse, parabola and hyperbola - the curves, as we now know, followed in their orbits by the planets, the comets and the stars.
On one page of the notebook I drew to the best of my ability the three conic sections with their axes and centers: an ellipse, a parabola, and an hyperbola.
The rectangle changed every five minutes, and a new point appeared on the hyperbola, showing the new position of the Snarkhunter instrument package.
Armies, nations, prime ministers, presidents and geniuses fall around it, not in steady planetlike orbits but in the crazy careening ellipses and hyperbolae of comets and stray asteroids.
It is not so much a dying city as an ungovernable one, seven million souls moving in seven million orbits under spectacular centrifugal pressures that threaten at any moment to make hyperbolas of us all.
The Orion drives had kicked the asteroids into fairly flat hyperbolas involving far less transit time than the years simple Hohmann transfer orbits would have taken, and those same drives continued to accelerate them steadily.
The teetering spires and hyperbolas loom so tall their lower stories disappear below in a haze of ramparts and sparkling viaducts and spans that meld with distance to a golden ether.
The planet rotates, it's inclined on its axis and precesses, it's also describing a large ellipse around the Sun, and the Sun is moving on the inward leg of a hyperbola with the galactic core at one focus, and the Galaxy—"