The parabola was studied by Menaechmus in an attempt to achieve cube duplication. Menaechmus solved the problem by finding the intersection of the two parabolas and . Euclid wrote about the parabola, and it was given its present name by Apollonius. Pascal considered the parabola as a projection of a circle, and Galileo showed that projectiles falling under uniform gravity follow parabolic paths. Gregory and Newton considered the catacaustic properties of a parabola that bring parallel rays of light to a focus (MacTutor Archive), as illustrated above.
For a parabola opening to the right with vertex at (0, 0), the equation in Cartesian coordinates is