Summary
I discovered this curve in 1978, when I passed the examination for the high school diploma with honors, that is, magna cum laude, at the “Istituto Massimiliano Massimo” in Rome, Italy.
At that time it was possible to submit an optional short dissertation on any subject during the oral examination. Given that mathematics has always been one of my favorite subjects, I decided to work on a formula that I had discovered a few months before and that seemed to have interesting properties.
I baptized the new curve siluroid (Siluroide in Italian language).
At the beginning of 2013 I found, at the bottom of an old trunk, some of the material that I used for the essay. Since it is still an interesting piece of work, I decided to publish it on the web.
The Siluroid
The name comes from the shape that the curve has on the Cartesian plane. It is a trilobate curve with a node in the origin of the axes, symmetrical with respect to the x-axis and with the positive lobe much larger than the negative ones, with respect to that axis.
Thus, the shape resembles a torpedo or a fish: hence the name.