Turns the general form of a conic into standard form, which is the version you can read the center, the radius or the axes straight off.
By Jason Price. Original release page
How to install it
- Download the program with the button above. You'll get a .tns file, the file type TI-Nspire calculators use.
- Open nspireconnect.ti.com in Chrome on a computer or Chromebook, and plug your calculator in with its charging cable.
- Choose File Transfer, then To Calculator, then From Computer, and pick the .tns file you just downloaded.
- When it lands, the calculator shows a prompt. Choose Open to jump straight into it.
Conics Solver's own documentation asks you to put it in the MyLib folder rather than My Documents, then choose Refresh Libraries from the Documents menu. That is what makes its commands available from any document you open afterwards.
TI's web app only supports the CX II and CX II CAS. If you have an original CX, or you already use the TI-Nspire Student Software, sending the file through that works the same.
Running it
Run conics() with nothing in the brackets. It asks for six numbers, a through f, which are the coefficients of the general form ax² + bxy + cy² + dx + ey + f = 0.
The one to watch is b, the coefficient on xy. The conics that come up in class sit square to the axes, so b is nearly always 0. You still have to type it, though. Skipping it shunts every number after it into the wrong slot, and what you get back is a confident answer to a question you didn't ask.
Answers print as (x + -2)² rather than (x - 2)². Same thing, just how it renders a negative.
Which conics it handles
General form is the sprawling version with x², y², x, y and a constant all in one line, which is how these questions arrive. Circles, ellipses, parabolas and hyperbolas all sit in that family. Doing the conversion by hand means completing the square twice, once in x and once in y, without dropping a sign.