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A carpenter is cutting a 3-ft by 4-ft elliptical sign from a 3-ft by 4-ft piece of plywood. The ellipse will be drawn using a string attached to the board at the foci of the ellipse.
a) How far from the ends of the board should the string be attached?
b) How long should the string be?
The eccentricity of an ellipse is defined as e = c / a. For an ellipse, 0 < c < a, so 0 < e < 1, when e is close to 0, an ellipse appears to be nearly circular. When e is close to 1, an ellipse is very flat. |
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