When I first began my CÉGEP mathematics courses, one of the things I noticed that was new was how my teacher would give “motivation” to what we’re doing. Basically, the idea was to give us a reason for why we were doing something, instead of just throwing it out in the blue.

At the beginning of my physics classes in CÉGEP, I would receive the formula sheet for my entire semester. That meant I had all the formulas on one page, allowing me to scope out what I would be doing in the semester.

If we were in the fourth century and I told you that the Earth was flat, a reasonable question you could ask me would be, “If you just continued moving in one direction, would you just eventually fall off?”

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In my multivariable calculus class, I learned about various types of curves that take different formats, from parametric to polar coordinates. Because the course was a sort of introduction to these notions, we weren’t given the “full” explanation on a bunch of these curves. Therefore, I want to touch on some interesting aspects of this category of curves (called limaçons) below.