"Conic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... us follow the shadow of the bead P as it moves along the surface of the table during the day. It will be found to describe a curve ACE ... FDB, approaching the point H as the sun advances towards noon, and receding from it afterwards. (The curve is a conic section—an hyperbola in these regions.) At the moment when it crosses the arc AB, mark the point A; AP is then the direction of the sun, and, as AH is horizontal, the angle PAH is the altitude of the sun. In ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... these mouldings were very rarely segments of circles, but lines of varying curvature, capable of producing the most delicate changes of light and shade, and contours of the most subtle grace. Many of them correspond to conic sections, but it seems probable that the outlines were drawn by hand, and not obtained by any ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... satisfaction we receive from the sciences, yet I doubt, if it be alone sufficient to give us any considerable enjoyment. The truth we discover must also be of some importance. It is easy to multiply algebraical problems to infinity, nor is there any end in the discovery of the proportions of conic sections; though few mathematicians take any pleasure in these researches, but turn their thoughts to what is more useful and important. Now the question is, after what manner this utility and importance operate upon us? The difficulty on this head arises from hence, that many ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... them to lack them; but I do lack time...So you still think I am sulking because I do not reply! But imagine, my dear and petulant brother, that for several weeks I have been pursuing, with unequalled persistence, some abominable conic problems proposed at the fellowship examination, and once I have mounted my hobby-horse, good-bye to letters, good-bye to replies, goodbye to everything." (Carpentras, 27th November, 1848.) "You are right, seven times right to storm at me, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... made acquainted, in dogmatic fashion, with the broad laws of morality, he has had no training in the application of those laws to the difficult problems which result from the complex conditions of modern civilisation. Would it not be very hard to expect any one to solve a problem in conic sections who had merely been taught the axioms ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... nor even a first class man, but he revenged himself on the university by putting firsts and double firsts out of fashion for the year and laughing down a species of pedantry which, at the age of twenty-three, leaves no room in a man's mind for graver subjects than conic sections or ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the person to perceive or appreciate these defects. She saw her, with mute wonder, blooming out before her very eyes, from a stout, stocky, frowzy child, with coarse red cheeks and knuckles like a bootblack, into a tall, slender girl, whose oval face was as regular as a conic section, and whose movements were as swift, strong, and graceful, when she forgot herself, as those of a race-horse. There were still the ties of habit and romance between them. Azalea, whose brother was a train-boy ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... the top is an extensive view over the island of Sphacteria, the port, with the town of Navarino to the south, and a considerable tract of the territory anciently called Messenia on the east, with the conic hill, which, though some miles from the shore, is used as a landmark to point out the entrance of the port. Mr. Purdy, in his New Sailing Directory for the Mediterranean Sea, says, "from the sea, a frigate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... chance to compose in peace. No. One fears that the attitude of these veterans was not wholly judicial. But then, why should any haphazard group of creative artists be expected to be judicial, anyway? One might as reasonably go to the Louvre for classes in conic sections, or to the Garden of the Gods for instruction ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... at all events," exclaimed Waymark. "I detest the very name of Parliament, and could as soon read Todhunter on Conic Sections as the reports of a debate. Perhaps you're a ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... of the mirror in the college-chamber. After this may come moonlight meetings at the gate, or long listenings to the plaintive lyrics that steal out of the parlor-windows, and that blur wofully the text of the Conic Sections. ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... second edition of 1771, was added the Treatise on Spherical Tangencies, by Fermat, which has since been reprinted in the Appendix to the Ladies' Diary for 1840. In 1767 appeared Emerson's Treatise on Conic Sections; a work which, notwithstanding its manifest defects, contributed not a little to aid the student in his approaches to the higher geometry, but whose publication would probably have been rendered unnecessary, had Dr. Simson so far ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... fire-balls, and meteoric stones are, with great probability, regarded as small bodies moving with planetary velocity, and revolving in obedience to the laws of general gravity in conic sections round the Sun. When these masses meet the Earth in their course, and are attracted by it, they enter within the limits of our atmosphere in a luminous condition, and frequently let fall more or less ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... facts and observations seemed in the first instance to have but slight significance, they are all found to have their eventual uses, and to fit into their proper places. Even many speculations seemingly remote, turn out to be the basis of results the most obviously practical. In the case of the conic sections discovered by Apollonius Pergaeus, twenty centuries elapsed before they were made the basis of astronomy—a science which enables the modern navigator to steer his way through unknown seas and traces for him in the heavens an unerring ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... be seen that a base-runner must not only have some wits but he must have them always with him. Exactly the same combinations never conic up, new ones are continually being presented, and in every case he must decide for himself what is best. In view of all the circumstances, he makes a quick mental estimate of the chances and acts accordingly. Sometimes ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... sphere among solids are the most capacious. Hippocrates treated of the duplication of the cube, and wrote elements of geometry, and knew that the area of a circle was equal to a triangle whose base is equal to its circumference and altitude equal to its radius. The disciples of Plato invented conic sections, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... circular orbit, and by the cycles and epicycles with which Copernicus had endeavoured to explain the planetary inequalities, Kepler was led, after many fruitless speculations,[47] to suppose the orbit of the planet to be oval; and, from his knowledge of the conic sections, he afterwards determined it to be an ellipse, with the sun placed in one of its foci. He then ascertained the dimensions of the orbit; and, by a comparison of the times employed by the planet to ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... the great problem is solved, it will be found that the fourth dimension is duration, extending in all directions like the circumference of a circle, the edges of a cube, and the curves of the conic sections. ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... 1738. My father, who was a musician, destined me to the same profession, hence I was instructed betimes in his art. That I might acquire a perfect knowledge of the theory as well as of the practice of music, I was set at an early age to study mathematics in all its branches—algebra, conic sections, infinitesimal analysis, ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... in that science, in heraldry, which she loved. It is far more pleasant to be describing a shield and settling questions in the queer old language of this queer old science, than in solving and propounding problems in trigonometry and conic sections. And then—how if your pupil begins to talk round the subject and to wander into other things? You cannot very well talk round a branch of mathematics, but heraldry is a subject surrounded by fields, meadows, and lawns, so to speak, all covered with beautiful flowers. Into these ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... remarkable for the perfection of its conic form. Owing to the perpendicular walls of lava formed on the slopes all around, it would seem impossible to reach the crater. The elevation of the peak has been computed at between 8,200 and 8,400 feet. I have been around the base on the E. and S. sides, but the grandest view is to ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... 1819, d. 1904), like the last mentioned subject, was, at the time of his death, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Besides theological writings, he contributed much to mathematical science, especially in the directions of conic sections, analytic geometry, higher plane curves, and the geometry of three dimensions. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and received the Copley and Royal medals, as well as distinctions from many universities ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... was quite content to sit under the trees with Renmark and weigh the different advantages of each of the girls. He sometimes appealed to his friend, as a man with a mathematical turn of mind, possessing an education that extended far into conic sections and algebraic formulae, to balance up the lists, and give him a candid and statistical opinion as to which of the two he should favor with serious proposals. When these appeals for help were ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... whose glittering ware bedazzles all beholders like a travelling meteor or opposition sun, and on the other side a seller of spruce beer, which brisk liquor is confined in several dozen of stone bottles. Here conic a party of ladies on horseback, in green ridings habits, and gentlemen attendant, and there a flock of sheep for the market, pattering over the bridge with a multitude nous clatter of their little hoofs; here a Frenchman with a hand-organ on ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for hedges, preferable for beauty, and a stiff defence to any plant I have ever seen, and may upon that account (without vanity) be said to have been the first which brought it into fashion, as well for defence, as for a succedaneum to cypress, whether in hedges, or pyramids, conic-spires, bowls or what other shapes, adorning the parks or larger avenues, with their lofty tops 30 foot high, and braving all the efforts of the most rigid Winter, which cypress cannot weather; I have said how long lasting they are, and easily ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... It is indeed what seems proper as between creature and creator. But philosophy is not made to govern the world; she rises above the common herd; she speaks a language that the crowd cannot understand. It would be suggesting to fishwives that they should study conic sections. ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... CONICUM, Pers. AEthalia small, ovoid-conic, gregarious, sometimes close together with the bases confluent, the surface pale umber or olivaceous marked with short brown lines, regularly dehiscent at the apex. The wall thin; the outer layer not continuous, the irregular brown vesicles disposed in ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan
... the entrance to his garden,—"Let no one enter, who is unacquainted with geometry,"—and had himself unveiled the geometrical analysis, exhibiting the whole strength and weakness of the instrument, and applying it successfully in the discussion of the properties of the Conic Sections. Various were the discoveries, and various the discoverers also, all now at rest, like Archimedes, the greatest of them all, in his Sicilian tomb, overgrown with brambles and forgotten, found only by careful research of that liberal-minded Cicero, and recognized only by the sphere and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... and writer, born at Clermont, in Auvergne; was distinguished at once as a mathematician, a physicist, and a philosopher; at 16 wrote a treatise on conic sections, which astonished Descartes; at 18 invented a calculating machine; he afterwards made experiments in pneumatics and hydrostatics, by which his name became associated with those of Torricelli and Boyle; an accident which befell ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... covered with signs and figures that meant nothing to her, and then there were the pocket-books, full of old-fashioned writing, and much of it in Latin, as her husband told her—it was a collection as void of significance as a treatise on conic sections, so far as Mary was concerned. But night after night Darnell shut himself up with the musty rolls, and more than ever when he rejoined her he bore upon his face the blazonry of some great adventure. And one night she asked him what interested him ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... was nervous, and asked that I might be allowed to do a bit of writing at home and bring it as a sample on the next day. I was then asked whether I was a proficient in arithmetic. What could I say? I had never learned the multiplication table, and had no more idea of the rule of three than of conic sections. "I know a little of it," I said humbly, whereupon I was sternly assured that on the morrow, should I succeed in showing that my handwriting was all that it ought to be, I should be examined as to that little of arithmetic. If that little should ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... strawberries in your garden there." Is not this the first reference to the strawberry under cultivation? Since the time of Henry V, what multitudes of garden varieties past the reckoning have been evolved from the smooth, conic EUROPEAN WOOD STRAWBERRY (F. vesca) now naturalized in our Eastern and Middle States, as well as from our own precious pitted native! Some authorities claim the berry received its name from the straw laid between garden rows to keep the fruit ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan |
