Finding the intersection of two parabolas

The point you’re looking for is the intersection of g(x, a) = \frac{x^2}{2a} - \frac{a}{2} and h(x,b,c) = \frac{(x-c)^2}{2b} - \frac{b}{2} (using the notation of your Desmos page), right? [Yay, LaTeX works!]

To find the x-coordinate of the intersection point as a function of a,b,c, you can set g=h and solve:

\frac{x^2}{2a} - \frac{a}{2} = \frac{(x-c)^2}{2b} - \frac{b}{2}

This is equivalent to the following quadratic equation:

\frac{b-a}{2ab} x^2 + \frac{c}{b}x +\left(\frac{b-a}{2}-\frac{c^2}{2b}\right) = 0

whose solutions are:

x = \frac{ac}{b-a}\left(-1 \pm \sqrt{1 - \frac{1}{ac^2}(b-a)(b^2-ab-c^2)}\right)

From fooling around on Desmos it looks like the solution with the + sign (purple vertical line) is the correct one:

To get the y-coordinate you can plug this expression for x into either g or h. I haven’t done the algebra to simplify it, but I added the line (purple horizontal line) and the final circle (purple) to my Desmos link above.

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