Practice: The Parabola

Question

A satellite dish is shaped like a paraboloid of revolution. This means that it can be formed by rotating a parabola around its axis of symmetry. The receiver is to be located at the focus. If the dish is 64 feet across at its opening and 8 feet deep at its center, where should the receiver be placed?

Find the equation of the parabola.

How far above the vertex should the receiver be placed?

Answer 1

The equation of the parabola you seek is y=x²/128 as you can see by plugging in x=32.

The focus is at (0,32).

Since the parabola is symmetric about the y axis, there will be no term in x.

To fubd the focus, you ne3ed to know or look up the general equation of a parabola.