Happy sextic (equation) day

Don’t be a pervert. I’m talking about the sextic equation, or the heart equation. Remember college algebra? Remember how this equation graphs a circle:

{(x-h)^2+(y-k)^2=r^2}

Well, there has to be a function out there that describes a heart, right? At least that’s what I was asking myself during church today. So google I did, and voila! Here a couple:

{x^2+(y-sqrt{delim{|}x{|}})^2=n, where n=3} 1found here, along with many others

My favorite comes from Wolfram 2home of Mathworld, which is known as the sextic equation:

{(x^2+9/4y^2+z^2-1)^3-x^2z^3-9/80y^2z^3=0}

plot of heart surface
plot of heart surface
heart surface
heart surface

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Footnotes


Posted

in

by

Modified:

Comments

6 responses to “Happy sextic (equation) day”

  1. Sarah Avatar

    I will mention that yesterday’s sermon was quite good, and you missed it by thinking about math the whole time! 😛 Love you!

  2. Rick Avatar
    Rick

    Rob. Sarah has gotta love ya. Hope you two had a great Valentines Day.

  3. Auntie Mellie Avatar
    Auntie Mellie

    You are adorable. I love it!

  4. Jon D. Avatar
    Jon D.

    Yikes, your question about remembering college algebra was a bit of a head scratcher. I had to think back about that. Can’t say any prof taught us the equation for a heart. Pretty cool.

    I think this could be made into a great Valentine’s card somehow.

  5. Mario Bio Avatar
    Mario Bio

    You’d have to be the biggest geek in the world to write this equation on a Valentine’s card and hand it to a loved one. I guess I’m gonna try to next year as a joke. It’s no secret that I’m handy with my graphing calculator. But I doubt my g/f will appreciate the gesture.

  6. Hannes Avatar
    Hannes

    Whoa! That’s some hard core algebra for Valentine’s Day! I didn’t know that they also coined the sextic equation as the heart equation. This is cool stuff.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.