Today I read more of The Joy of X and thought about the question regarding parabolas from yesterday. The way to find the angles between lines is, of course, to use trigonometry. (This did not occur to me immediately.) Some of my explorations this evening found me invoking the exotic sounding arccotangent of $x$, though I don’t know if it will be involved in the final solution.
Since we’re confessing our sheepishness to one another, I don’t know that I have ever asked the question you asked about ellipses. I’m going to be interested to see how this comes out.
Me, too. It may have to wait until I’ve done some calculus review, since derivatives will almost certainly be involved. I remember how to do the derivative needed for the parabola problem, but not the ellipse one.
I know I haven’t (asked that question). Suddenly, I feel less lonely.
We are all in this together.
🙂❤️🫂,
or words to that effect.
Or emojis to that effect. 🫂