Mathing with Theo

Back in high school we learned that any right triangle inscribed inside of a circle has vertices on a point on the circumference and two points on the opposite ends of the diameter (if the right angle vertex is on the circumference).

I was able to use this simple fact which had been sitting in the back of my mind, long dormant, to cut in exactly half a piece of foam shaped into a circle. And I didn’t even have to do any measurements, simply mark off a right triangle in the circle!

In the process of constructing some solar concentrating troughs I needed a semi-circle with a hole in it to support the pipes which will carry the heating fluid.

So I guess now when someone asks what can you do with trigonometry you can quickly respond with “cut a circular piece of foam in exactly half without having to do any measurements”… yep… and we all thought math was impractical.

Related posts:

1. Fun with heliostats
2. Mystical Mathematics

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Math. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.