Encyclopedia > Hyperbolic spiral

Article Content

Hyperbolic spiral

A hyperbolic spiral is a transcendental plane curve[?] also known as a reciprocal spiral. It has the polar equation rθ = a, and is the inverse to the Archimedean spiral.

Hyperbolic spiral, for a=2.

It begins at an infinite distance from the pole in the centre, it winds faster and faster around as it approaches the pole, the distance from any point to the pole, following the curve, is infinite. The following is a parametric representation in Euclidean coordinates[?]:

x = a/t cos t

y = a/t sin t

where t is a parameter. It has an asymptote at y = a.

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!

Featured Article

Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz

... at the university of Königsberg[?], where he remained till his death. In his last years he was quite blind. Throughout his long professorial career, and in all ...