someth1ng
Retired Nov '14
Can someone explain it to me? It's the weirdest proof...ever.
Same approach as for chord of contact for parabola & hyperbola. As the Cambridge book points out, it is a really elegant proof. And the beauty is it looks exactly like the eqn of the tangent, except the point is not on the ellipse.Its an elegant proof. What you need to be careful of is confusing fixed point (x1,y1) etc. with the general points (x,y)
elegant = weirdSame approach as for chord of contact for parabola & hyperbola. As the Cambridge book points out, it is a really elegant proof.
Hardly.elegant = weird
for this proof, as least when I first saw itHardly.
yeah, since it can shown the line xx0/a^2+yy0/b^2=1 (where x0 and y0 are constants) pass through both P (since x1x0/a^2+y1y0/b^2=1) and Q (since x2x0/a^2+y2y0/b^2=1)In the tangent formulae to chord of contact formulae, isn't it just that the co-ordinates P(x1, y1) and Q(x2,y2) are represented as x and since you know that both can be subbed in to the straight line and be true, then it must be true?