Reflections Inside an Ellipse

A light ray is reflected in the interior of an ellipse, tracing out a region whose boundary is a hyperbola or a different ellipse within the original ellipse. Includes three questions, of increasing depth and complexity, to get students thinking about what's going on. For more on this type of thing, Google "dynamical billiards" or check out the excellent book "Mathematical Omnibus: Thirty Lectures on Classic Mathematics" by Fuchs and Tabachnikov.

 

Clint Givens

 
Resource Type
Activity
Tags
billiards  conic-sections  ellipse  hyperbola 
Target Group (Age)
12 – 18
Language
English
 
 
GeoGebra version
4.2
Views
2127
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