The ancient Greeks, being masters of geometric manipulation, often tried their hand at "squaring" various shapes. This involved using only the most fundamental rules of geometry to construct a square whose area equals the area of the original shape.

Can you follow in their footsteps and square a simple triangle?

The solution must hold for all types of triangles.

(In reply to solution by B)

B,

What you wrote is true, but it doesn't really answer the problem.

The problem is asking for the geometric construction. So, given a triangle (essentially three non-colinear points), using only a compass and a straightedge (and a pencil), show how one can construct a square with side equal to √(1/2 x b x h).

Posted by Thalamus on 2004-09-22 13:33:09