Ellipse

In mathematics, an ellipse is a curve on a plane surrounding two focal points such that a straight line drawn from one of the focal points to any point on the curve and then back to the other focal point has the same length for every point on the curve. As such, it is a generalization of a circle, which is a special type of an ellipse that has both focal points at the same location. The shape of an ellipse (how 'elongated' it is) is represented by its eccentricity, which for an ellipse can be any number from 0 (the limiting case of a circle) to arbitrarily close to but less than 1. Ellipses are the closed type of conic section: a plane curve that results from the intersection of a cone by a plane. (See figure to the right.) Ellipses have many similarities with the other two forms of conic sections: the parabolas and the hyperbolas, both of which are open and unbounded. The cross section of a cylinder is an ellipse if it is sufficiently far from parallel to the axis of the cylinder. Analytically, an ellipse can also be defined as the set of points such that the ratio of the distance of each point on the curve from a given point (called a focus or focal point) to the distance from that same point on the curve to a given line (called the directrix) is a constant, called the eccentricity of the ellipse. [Ellipse. Wikipedia]