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Ellipse by Paper Folding

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Let be the center of a circle with radius and let be a point inside the circle. Choose a point on the circumference. Let be the intersection of the perpendicular bisector of and line . Then . So the point is on the ellipse with foci and and the sum of the distances from to the foci is .

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To construct a tangent on the ellipse, fold the circle so that the circumference touches the point .

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Contributed by: Izidor Hafner (March 2019)
Using code by: Borut Levart
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

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