Bifolium

A bifolium is a quartic plane curve with equation in Cartesian coordinates:

(x^{2}+y^{2})^{2}=ax^{2}y.

Bifolium with

a = 1

Construction and equations

Construction of the bifolium

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

\rho =a\sin \theta \cos ^{2}\theta .

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

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[1] Kokoska, Stephen. "Fifty Famous Curves, Lots of Calculus Questions, And a Few Answers" (PDF). Retrieved 6 January 2018.