Bifolium
Quartic plane curve
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Bifolium01.svg/220px-Bifolium01.svg.png)
A bifolium is a quartic plane curve with equation in Cartesian coordinates:
Construction and equations
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Bifolium.gif/440px-Bifolium.gif)
Given a circle C through a point O, and line L tangent to the circle at point O: for each point Q on C, define the point P such that PQ is parallel to the tangent line L, and PQ = OQ. The collection of points P forms the bifolium.[1]
In polar coordinates, the bifolium's equation is
For a = 1, the total included area is approximately 0.10.
References
- ^ Kokoska, Stephen. "Fifty Famous Curves, Lots of Calculus Questions, And a Few Answers" (PDF). Retrieved 6 January 2018.
External links
- Bifolium at MathWorld