Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
a² + b² = c² (imgur.com)
63 points by niyazpk on July 1, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 6 comments



Cute... It reminds me of proofs my father designed into a barn he built years ago.

http://waiveris.com/project/fractals/barnwindows/


I like that it's animated; nearly every static "visual proof" of the Pythagorean theorem is nearly incomprehensible to me without a lot of explanation---I'm a huge fan of visual proofs but for most of them you really need a time dimension to make sense of them.


Another cute way that's more obviously correct without translations is to consider a square with sides of length a+b. You get an interior square of area c^2 and 4 right triangles with legs of size a and b.


Nice animation, but I think in the last step when c² is mentioned (after "a² + b²"), the c-square should be restored such that it is again visible as square.


If you like this sort of thing, definitely check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Proofs-without-Words-Exercises-Classro...


now let's do this for the rest of the education field!




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: