The Standup Conic Presents: The Parabola and Applications

Are you bored with the parabola? Does the ellipse make you apathetic? Does the hyperbola give you that tired, run-down feeling? If so, you need some conic relief. This paper is the first in a series of mathematical side-shows on the conic sections. It contains a variety of real-world applications of the parabola. Some of them are well known, but many are not. Subsequent papers will consider the ellipse and the hyperbola.