- #1
Bluskyz
- 21
- 0
Homework Statement
To satisfy my curiosity, I tried to come up with an equation that describes how a line reflects off a parabola. The equation I came up with is [(tan[2*arctan(-y/50)]*[1000-(y^2)])/100]+y
This equation works wonderfully but its just large and ugly.
The wolfram alpha site for this equation is:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=[(tan[2*arctan(-y/50)]*[1000-(y^2)])/100]+y
It just helps visualize the equation. From there, I noticed that wolfram simplifies this down further to (-1500*y)/([y^2]-2500)
How would I go about simplifying the original equation to the nice one wolfram gives?
Homework Equations
[(tan[2*arctan(-y/50)]*[1000-(y^2)])/100]+y
The Attempt at a Solution
I have tried to look at many trig identities involving the tangent functions but none of them seem to help in this case. I have tried moving things around but everything I try just seems to stop with those ugly tangents still left.