a parabolic dish

06may21


    What would the north  south main cables look like if we switched from a spherical to a parabolic dish.
Computations use the following constraints:

The equations used:

The plots show a parabola, sphere, and catenary spanning the dish (.ps) (.pdf)

In the real world you'd probably  have the catenary hang above the bottom of the reflector so you could pull it even at the center.

Tension in the cable:

processing: x101/210506/parabola.pro


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