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Triangles
Galileo.
In 1660, Viviani measured the speed of
sound by detecting a canon fire and
measuring the time it takes for the canon
sound to reach some distance.
He was appointed as court mathematician by
the Grand Duke. He gave money for
constructing the tomb of Galileo in the
Church of Santa Croce.
Viviani's theorem has many interesting
extensions and can be applied to three
dimensional objects like regular
tetrahedron.
Quadrilaterals
1 Varignon parallelogram
Draw any arbitrary quadrialateral [convex]
ABCD. Let P,Q,R and S be the midpoints of
its sides AB,BC, CD and DA. Join PQRS and
show that PQRS is a paralleogram.
PQRS is called "Varignon Paralleogram".
Hint: Draw the diagonal BD. Show that PS and
QR are parallel to BD. Likewise show that PQ
and SR are parallel.
2 Show that the sum of the sides of Varignon
Paralleogram PQRS [the perimeter] is equal
to the sum of the diagonals AC and BD of the
original quadrilateral ABCD.
3 Show that the area of PQRS is half of the
area of ABCD.
Napoleon's theorem
Napoleon Bonaparte [1769-1821] , Emperor of
France from 1804 to 1815, was also a keen
student of mathematics. He was interviewed
by Laplace for entrance into Military
Academy. Later Napoleon became a member of
the math section of French National
Institute--a scientific society.
He took the famous mathematician Joseph
Fourier and other scholars with him during
the military campaign in Egypt. He brought
several mathematicians such as Lorenzo
Mascheroni , Laplace, Lagrange and Mange to
his royal court to discuss mathematics.
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