An Introduction to Hyperbolas
Hyperbolas don't come up much ? at least not that I've noticed ? in other math classes, but if you're covering conics, you'll need to know their basics. An hyperbola looks sort of like two mirrored parabolas, with the two "halves" being called "branches". Like an ellipse, an hyperbola has two foci and two vertices; unlike an ellipse, the foci in an hyperbola are further from the hyperbola's center than are its vertices: