Ever feel the suspense of a roller coaster when it was slowly climbing that dreaded drop and a second later you may have felt the rush of air blowing toward your face when the roller coaster speeds down that terrifying drop. Well that's actually all thanks to parabolas. If you look at the roller coaster to the right you notice it is in the shape of a parabola. Without the parabola every roller coaster in the world would be a boring strait track with no fun. Parabolas help make the drops you so often see at the peak of the ride. Parabolas use gravity and slowly inch you to the top while fighting this gravitational force, but when you reach the top, they let go. This causes the speed you experience becasue you are at a downward angle incresing your speed and on top of that you have gravity also pulling you down, further increasing your speed. Therefore, even though parabolas can be boring and annoying in math class, you really have to thank them for being so useful and creating such a fun and exhilirating ride.
-The parabola is used to slow down the process of getting to the vertex and speed up the roller coaster when it gets past the vertex -zeros are the begging and end of the drop -axis of symetry is the big pole touching the vertex at a 90% angle |
Mother nature is really something isn't it? Well mother nature has been using parabolas before we even discovered them. One example of this is when, a dolphin jumps out ofthe water in the shape of a parabola and dives back down, as seen in the diagram to the right. It's amazing how even animals know about parabolas and how to use them. If you were windering why dolphins might use parabolas? Well it's quite simple, dolphins breathe air just like you or me. Therefore, instead of staying on the surface of the water they jump up take a quick breath of air and dive back down, they do so in the shape of a parabola becasue it is the most simple, quickest, and effective way to get their breathe of fresh air. Even though parabolas can seem useless many animals and people alike use parabolas to live and benifit themselves evry single day.
-The middle dolphin represents the vertex -The ocean represents the X axix -the area where the dolphin surfaces and dives are the zeros -Doplhins can also strech and compress their parabola to their choosing |
You may not think of it but satallite dishes use parabolas too. If you take a closer looke to the diagram on the right you can see that it is in the shape of a parabola. The parabola shape helps the waves to travel from the satallite and to everyones t.v at home. Without the parabolic shape the waves wouldn't travel properly and cause a huge disarray. Satallite dishes help us communicate and get information to each other. Without parabolic satallites we wouldn't be able to do so and we would have to send letters which are inpractical due to the timeit takes for them to reach their destination. In conlusion, parabolas have helped us in so many ways and satllites are no exception.
|