Category: Euclid

Area of a circle – proof by exhuastion

Once \pi has been defined as the ratio circumference to diameter, the area of a circle must be \pi r^{2}.

A proof relies on an infinite, limiting process which paves the way to some calculus-like ideas.

A circle is cut up into 6 sectors which are then rearranged into a near rectangle,

What doesn’t look too close to a rectangle at 6 sectors looks better at 26:

As the number of sectors becomes very big the shape becomes indistinguishable from a rectangle and the argument is complete.

I think that Archimedes used such arguments, or, proof by exhaustion, in some of his solid geometry work.

Parallelograms generalise Pythagoras to any triangle

There’s always space on the inter-web for another proof of Pythagoras’s Theorem.  Here’s one that uses the following equal areas property of parallelograms.

160530AreaOfParallelogram

This kind of area chopping and shape translation is a feature of Euclidean geometry and our senses support it’s veracity at the order of size of the classroom.

The squares on the sides of a right-angle triangle set up a system of parallel lines which can then be used to demonstrate the Theorem using the above equal areas property.

160529PythagProof

The thread does not stop here though.  Taking the parallel line structure which makes this work we get a generalisation of Pythagoras to non-right-angled triangles with the area of the parallelogram on the longest side being the sum of the areas of those constructed on the other two sides.

160530PythagGeneralised

Before the beginning – Euclid’s Common Notions

This preamble from Euclid’s Elements is where mathematics education still goes wrong, even after 2000 years or so.

Sound notions of what equality is are required as a bedrock of algebra.  Dynamic approaches of teaching equation solving, in which terms and numbers move and change sign, seem to work at first but lack the simplicity of mathematical logic and create all sorts of problems when randomly, but apparently sensibly, applied.