Triangles and hexagons and circles, oh my! Try your hand at these geometry questions from St John’s Maths lecturer Dr Devinder Sivia…
Question 1
With reference to right-angled triangles, express Pythagoras’ theorem in three different ways using sines, cosines and tangents.
Question 2
(2a) The closed curve that encloses the largest area for a given length of perimeter is a circle. Show that for rectangles with a fixed perimeter, a square encloses the largest area.
(2b) Work out the areas of an equilateral triangle, a square and a regular hexagon in terms of their perimeter.
(2c) What will be the area for the case of an n-sided regular polygon in the limit n → ∞?
Question 3
Calculate the perimeters of the regular hexagons that inscribe and circumscribe a circle, and hence place a bound on the value of π.