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Triangle Dissection Paradox
- francoisdevlin 16y agoLots of people don't have the discipline for math, news at 11.
- teilo 16y agoNot a paradox, but an optical illusion. Really, not even that. If you look at where the grid lines intersect, you can see that though the angles of the red and yellow triangles are similar, they are not exactly the same. In other words: the composite triangle is not really even a triangle, but a 4-sided polygon with one very obtuse angle.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoNot even an optical illusion, more of an optical slight-of-hand. 2/5ths and 3/8ths are quite close fractions, but they are not the same. Neither of the figures are triangles, they are just very close to triangles. In each case there is a triangular piece either missing or added on to the perceived triangle. The reason this deception works so well is because the deviation from the perceived triangle is only half of the extra area bit and that area is spread across the longest dimension of the figure (the hypotenuse of the perceived triangle). This is a good lesson in avoiding letting your eye and your gut lead you to conclusions. Neither are precision instruments.