A fur dresser had to put a patch shaped like a scalene triangle on a piece of fur. Suddenly he realized he had made a terrible mistake. The patch fitted the hole but the fur side faced the wrong way.

The fur dresser, after some thought, cut the triangular patch into 3 parts, each of which would be unchanged when turned over. How?

Brian Smith's Solution:
Breaks the triangle into two isosceles triangles and a kite by forming right triangles and bisecting the sides. Both shapes have a line of symmetry and so can be flipped over. This solution will work for any triangle.

rixar's Solution:
Breaks the triangle into 3 kites by dropping prependiculars from the incenter. Again, this works for any triangle.

Nice solutions. (I'm jealous, but maybe I'll make some applets from geometer's sketchpad drawings.)

-Jer

Posted by Jer on 2004-05-29 15:53:26