What you’ll learn to do: Identify characteristics of quadratic functions and their resulting parabolas

An array of satellite dishes. (credit: Matthew Colvin de Valle, Flickr)

Curved antennas, such as the ones shown in the photo, are commonly used to focus microwaves and radio waves to transmit television and telephone signals, as well as satellite and spacecraft communication. The cross-section of the antenna is in the shape of a parabola, which can be described by a quadratic function.