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Monthly Math: March 2024

By Suma Bhiravarasa & Emma Lu

Edited by Nadia Dupuis and Ms. Barry

Parabolas: we’ve all worked with this symmetrical U-shape. But whether or not you like them, they will show up in real life. Take the football field. A player bends his arm back to throw and then extends it out, propelling the ball through the air. Look at the curve; it seems like a parabola, doesn’t it? Then the highest point the ball reaches would be the vertex, and the place it hits the ground would be x-intercept.

Don’t like football? Fine, take suspension bridges. A lot of the math that goes into designing a suspension bridge has to do with the parabola that is formed by the main suspension wires. And it’s not just these two examples. Parabolas have applications everywhere. No need to ask “How are parabolas useful in my real life?” because now you know that they are everywhere.

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