On a vertical parabola , pick a point . Another vertical parabola is tangent to at . Spanning through all possible parabolas , what is the locus of the focus of ?
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
Consider the vertical line passing through T . The reflection of the vertical line about the line tangent to P 1 and P 2 through T must pass through both the focus of P 1 and the focus of P 2 through the reflective property of parabolas that all light shone vertically in a parabola reflects through the focus.
But this means that focus of P 1 , P 2 , and the point T are collinear. Since P 1 and T are predefined, then P 2 's locus must be the line passing through the focus of P 1 and the point T .