Dividing A Given Circle Into Four Equal Arcs Given Its Centre
Centred on any point X on circle C, draw an arc through O (the centre of C) which intersects C at points V and Y. Do the same centred on Y through O, intersecting C at X and Z. Note that the segments OV, OX, OY, OZ, VX, XY, YZ have the same length, all distances being equal to the radius of the circle C.
Now draw an arc centred on V which goes through Y and an arc centred on Z which goes through X; call where these two arcs intersect T. Note that the distances VY and XZ are times the radius of the circle C.
Put the compass radius equal to the distance OT ( times the radius of the circle C) and draw an arc centred on Z which intersects the circle C at U and W. UVWZ is a square and the arcs of C UV, VW, WZ, and ZU are each equal to a quarter of the circumference of C.
Read more about this topic: Napoleon's Problem
Famous quotes containing the words dividing, circle, equal and/or centre:
“If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.”
—Alfred Tennyson (18091892)
“We are such docile creatures, normally, that it takes a virus to jolt us out of lifes routine. A couple of days in a fever bed are, in a sense, health-giving; the change in body temperature, the change in pulse rate, and the change of scene have a restorative effect on the system equal to the hell they raise.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by ones fellow countrymen.... But to emigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)