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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 .
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 ...
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.
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.
The Pythagorean theorem is also ancient, but it could only take its central role in the measurement of distances after the invention of Cartesian coordinates by René Descartes in 1637. The distance formula itself was first published in 1731 by Alexis Clairaut. [33]
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.
The three sides of a right triangle are related by the Pythagorean theorem, which in modern algebraic notation can be written a 2 + b 2 = c 2 , {\displaystyle a^{2}+b^{2}=c^{2},} where c {\displaystyle c} is the length of the hypotenuse (side opposite the right angle), and a {\displaystyle a} and b {\displaystyle b} are the lengths of the legs ...