Animations of Conic Sections

A conic section is the intersection of a plane and a cone. The three conic sections ellipse, parabola or hyperbola can be produced by changing the slope of the plane (that is, the angle between the axes of the cone and the intersecting plane). In the applet below we consider an infinite cone with an angle .
  • Play the animation to see a demonstration of the conics, hyperbola, parabola, ellipse and circle.
  • Stop the animation and explore additional special cases by changing the angle of the plane (drag the orange point) and the location of the plane (drag the brown point).