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The Locus of the Focus of a Rolling Parabola

by Anurag Argarwal (Rochester Institute of Technology) and James Marengo (Rochester Institute of Technology)

This article originally appeared in:
College Mathematics Journal
March, 2010

Subject classification(s): Geometry and Topology | Analytic Geometry
Applicable Course(s): 2.1 College Algebra | 3.2 Mainstream Calculus II

The authors show that the locus of the focus of a parabola rolling on the \(x\)-axis is a catenary.


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