I have a strip of paper with parallel sides, a pencil and a straight edge. How can I construct a regular pentagram (star) with these? And for that matter, a pentagon? Well ... the pentagon is the proper way to go.

Betsy Ross used a concept like this in producing 5 point stars for the first American flag.  George Washington originally suggested a sixpoint star, insisting that a perfect five point star was too hard to reproduce.  With a few folds of her cloth and a snip, Betsy Ross produce a perfect five point star.

Posted by john on 2005-07-07 15:41:50