Conic Sections for Dummies

ellipse, circle, cone

When it comes to writing about STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) many a self-appointed internet freelancer is hobbled by a weak educational background. You can reach a PhD in history, French, "communications," or creative writing without having taken anything beyond a token arithmetic or elementary science course in your freshman year of college. When it comes to researching and rewording technical stuff for content farms, many of these liberal arts majors fall flat. Take, for instance, Jon Zamboni¹ (not, we suspect, a real name) from eHow. He rewrote "How to Calculate the Base of a Cone" for Demand Media, and Leaf Group moved it to Sciencing.com.

We aren't sure why DMS² decided to replace the old version written by Ryan Menezes, since it was straightforward and simple. Zamboni, on the other hand, penned some slop filled with the literary equivalent of teddy bears and posies, but which basically sucked for straightforward math. Right off the bat, Jon started with this rather inane claim:

"The base of a cone is its single circular face, the widest circle in the stack of circles that runs up or down the cone's length."

We'd like to point out that his "stack of circles" trope is utter bull, not to mention that the base of a cone could be an ellipse if the base isn't perpendicular to the axis of the cone.  But never mind – that would probably confuse a dude with a degree in religion. Moving right along, Zamboni wanted his readers to use the radius of the base in the formula A = πr² to calculate the area of the base. Of course, that presupposes that "calculating the base of a cone" means calculating its area.
However, we wondered that would happen if you didn't know the radius. What then? Well, if you knew the cone's volume and the height, you could use that to calculate the area of the base: a cone's volume =  πr²(h/3) where h is the height, so simply divide the volume by the cone's height and multiply by 3.

But no, Jon wasn't going there... which means he had to pad out his answer to meet the DMS minimum word count, adding in such scintillating factoids as "...pi extended to seven digits would be 3.1415926. However, 3.14 is considered a good enough approximation for basic geometry equations" and "A number squared is equal to that number multiplied by itself." Given Zamboni's failure of logic – anyone studying the geometry of cones already knows the meanings of pi and "squared" – our awards committee couldn't help but name Jon the Dumbass of the Day.

¹ Suddenly we want to watch a hockey game. Wonder why...
² DMS, Demand Media Studios, is now known as Leaf Group. That's a shame, because you can say "You can't spell 'dumbass' without 'DMS,'" but "You can't spell 'dumbass' without 'Leaf Group'" just doesn't ring.

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