Education Technology

Parametric Conic Sections

Subject Area
Math: Precalculus: Analytic Geometry (Conics)
Level
9-12
Activity Time
45 Minutes
Software
TI-Nspire™ CX
TI-Nspire™ CX CAS
TI Calculator
TI-Nspire CX series
TI-Nspire™ CX CAS/CX II CAS
TI-Nspire Version
5.0
Resource Types
Lessons
Format
TNS

Parametric Conic Sections

Activity Overview

This activity has students create sliders to control parameters of parametric equations.

About the Lesson

The conic sections - a parabola, an ellipse, and a hyperbola - can be completely described using parametric equations. Provided below are detailed steps for constructing a TI-Nspire document to graph and investigate these families of conic sections. Sliders will be used to control the parameters that characterize each conic section.

Subject Area
Math: Precalculus: Analytic Geometry (Conics)
Level
9-12
Activity Time
45 Minutes
Software
TI-Nspire™ CX
TI-Nspire™ CX CAS
TI Calculator
TI-Nspire CX series
TI-Nspire™ CX CAS/CX II CAS
TI-Nspire Version
5.0
Resource Types
Lessons
Format
TNS
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