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Euler's quadrilateral theorem or Euler's law on quadrilaterals, named after Leonhard Euler (1707–1783), describes a relation between the sides of a convex quadrilateral and its diagonals. It is a generalisation of the parallelogram law which in turn can be seen as generalisation of the Pythagorean theorem .
In mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem or Pythagoras' theorem is a fundamental relation in Euclidean geometry between the three sides of a right triangle. It states that the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle ) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares on the other two sides.
IM 67118, also known as Db 2-146, is an Old Babylonian clay tablet in the collection of the Iraq Museum that contains the solution to a problem in plane geometry concerning a rectangle with given area and diagonal. In the last part of the text, the solution is proved correct using the Pythagorean theorem. The steps of the solution are believed ...
Geometrically, the square root of 2 is the length of a diagonal across a square with sides of one unit of length; this follows from the Pythagorean theorem. It was probably the first number known to be irrational. [1] The fraction 99 / 70 (≈ 1.4142857) is sometimes used as a good rational approximation with a reasonably small denominator.
For the general quadrilateral (with four sides not necessarily equal) Euler's quadrilateral theorem states + + + = + +, where is the length of the line segment joining the midpoints of the diagonals. It can be seen from the diagram that x = 0 {\displaystyle x=0} for a parallelogram, and so the general formula simplifies to the parallelogram law.
More generally, if the quadrilateral is a rectangle with sides a and b and diagonal d then Ptolemy's theorem reduces to the Pythagorean theorem. In this case the center of the circle coincides with the point of intersection of the diagonals. The product of the diagonals is then d 2, the right hand side of Ptolemy's relation is the sum a 2 + b 2.
Draw an equilateral triangle ABC with side length 2 and with point D as the midpoint of segment BC. Draw an altitude line from A to D. Then ABD is a 30°–60°–90° triangle with hypotenuse of length 2, and base BD of length 1. The fact that the remaining leg AD has length √ 3 follows immediately from the Pythagorean theorem.
This follows from the Pythagorean theorem, by which either of these two sums of two squares can be expanded to equal the sum of the four squared distances from the quadrilateral's vertices to the point where the diagonals intersect. Conversely, any quadrilateral in which a 2 + c 2 = b 2 + d 2 must be orthodiagonal. [5]