Ellipse
A conic section with eccentricity less than one. It resembles a squashed circle.
Ellipse is a high school-level concept that would be first encountered in a pre-calculus course covering conic sections. It is listed in the California State Standards for Algebra II.
Examples
Circle: | A circle is the set of points in a plane that are equidistant from a given center point. |
Prerequisites
Conic Section: | The conic sections are the classes of nondegenerate curves generated by the intersections of a plane with one or two nappes of a cone. A conic section can also be realized as the zero set of a quadratic equation in two variables. |