Today we will focus on the study of Euclidean geometry of plane figures. Around 300 BCE a Greek mathematician Euclid developed a rigorous way to study plane geometry in his work Elements based on axioms (statement assumed to be correct) and theorems (statements deduced from axioms). The axioms of Euclidean Elements are the following:
For any two different points, there exists a line containing these two points, and this line is unique.
A straight line segment can be prolonged indefinitely.
A circle is defined by a point for its centre and a distance for its radius.
All right angles are equal.
For any line
In examples we deduce from the axioms above the following basic principles:
1. The supplementary angles (angles "hugging" a straight line) add up to
2. The sum of all internal angles of a triangle is also
3. A line cutting two parallel lines cuts them at the same angles (these are called corresponding angles).
4. In an isosceles triangle (which has two sides of equal lengths), the two angles touching the third side are equal.
Let’s have a look at some examples of how to apply these axioms to prove geometric statements.
We call two figures congruent if their corresponding sides and angles are equal. Let
It follows from the previous statement that if two lines
We prove the other two assertions from the description:
The sum of all internal angles of a triangle is also
In an isosceles triangle (which has two sides of equal lengths), two angles touching the third side are equal.
In the triangle
Consider a quadrilateral
The numbers from
On a Halloween night ten children with candy were standing in a row. In total, the girls and boys had equal amounts of candy. Each child gave one candy to each person on their right. After that, the girls had
There are
Cut an arbitrary triangle into parts that can be used to build a triangle that is symmetrical to the original triangle with respect to some straight line (the pieces cannot be inverted, they can only be rotated on the plane).
Find all solutions of the puzzle