Warning! This is a very sad post. Because now, we are going to flip our parabolas upside down!
Sad parabola.
Sorry, that was my sister’s idea. You can blame your tears on her.
But how on Earth did this sad story come to pass? Well, it all began with a very happy parabola …
who’s y coordinates all became negative! This makes the dots, which get connected by a parabola, go down on the y axis. But how could this be? If you look at our square numbers here …
The ys are all positive! And if we make the xs negative …
the ys are STILL positive! A negative times a negative equals a positive, right? Our parabola is still happy! But we need to make our parabolas sad, because I’m evil.
So, we’re going to cheat. Because, like I said, I’m evil. We are going to make our y negative!
Muahahahaha!
Okay, that was way easy. But how do we do that in our equation? Simple: y = –(x²) Now, y equals negative x²! Oh dear, our parabola doesn’t look too happy about that.
You know what? I’m getting rid of the eyes! This is just too depressing!
There we go. Now how about we play around with this parabola and move it around a bit? Let’s try y = –(x²+7)+5.
And y = –(x-6)²+1
See? It’s the same parabola, just … well … sad.
Sorry, couldn’t help myself!
earthskyseeker 