A geometric approach to Euler's addition formula (Q656931)

Consider a plane quartic curve, determined by an affine Weierstrass equation \(y^2=F(x)\), with a polynomial \(F\) of degree \(4\). These curves are singular models of elliptic curves and they admit a geometric description of the group law, analogous to the classical secant construction for cubic models, in which a certain family of quadrics plays the role of the secants. Unfortunately, this construction works only for a certain open and dense subset of the set of regular points of the given quartic. This geometric construction is applied to obtain, in a very direct way, addition formulas for elliptic integrals with kernels of the form \(1/\sqrt{F(t)}\).