A Mathematical Coincidence
Take any Kepler triangle with sides and consider:
- the circle that circumscribes it, and
- a square with side equal to the middle-sized edge of the triangle.
Then the perimeters of the square and the circle coincide up to an error less than 0.1%.
This is the mathematical coincidence . The square and the circle cannot have exactly the same perimeter, because in that case one would be able to solve the classical (impossible) problem of the quadrature of the circle. In other words, because is a transcendental number.
According to some sources, Kepler triangles appear in the design of Egyptian pyramids. However, the ancient Egyptians probably did not know the mathematical coincidence involving the number and the golden ratio .
Read more about this topic: Kepler Triangle
Famous quotes containing the words mathematical and/or coincidence:
“It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (18741946)