Question

Please answer quickly! A radio telescope has a parabolic surface, as shown below. A parabola opening up with vertex at the origin is graphed on the coordinate plane. The height of the parabola from top to bottom is 1 meter and its width from left to right is 20 meters. If the telescope is 1 m deep and 20 m wide, how far is the focus from the vertex?

Answer 1

Basing on the description, a parabola checking with vertex at origin, the formula with vertex at origin can be used, x^2 = 4py. p is the focus therefore with the dimensions given, we get yourself a 0.25 and this is the distance of the focus to the vertex.