Pointis on the parabola
The origin is: .
The perpendicular bisector of chordhas
-intercept
Code:
|
bo ♥
|\
| \
| \ ♥P
| \ *
♥ | \ * ♥
♥ | o ♥
♥ | * ♥
♥ | * ♥
- - - - - - ♥ - - - - - - -
O
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Pointis on the parabola
The origin is: .
The perpendicular bisector of chordhas
-intercept
Code:
|
bo ♥
|\
| \
| \ ♥P
| \ *
♥ | \ * ♥
♥ | o ♥
♥ | * ♥
♥ | * ♥
- - - - - - ♥ - - - - - - -
O
Let P have coordinates. Then the center of OP has coordinates
. The slope of the chord is
, so the slope of the perpendicular is
. Thus, the equation of the perpendicular bisector is
, and
. From here,
. Therefore,
and not
as I thought initially.
I found the following theorem in this PDF document.
The axis is the vertical one. Indeed, the length of the segment in question isQuote:
The perpendicular bisector of a parabola chord and the perpendicular to the axis through the center of the chord cut off a segment on the axis of length equal to the distance of the focus to the directrix.
, the focus of the parabola
is
and the directrix is
.