OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 30/07/20, SPi

The Wonder Book of Geometry

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 30/07/20, SPi
 l s t o ry
a tica
m a them
a


OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 30/07/20, SPi

1
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 30/07/20, SPi

Contents

1. Introduction 1
2. Getting Started 4
3. Euclid’s Elements 9
Euclid, 1732 12
4. Thales’ Theorem 14
The Mathematical World of Ancient Greece 18
5. Geometry in Action 20
6. Pythagoras’ Theorem 26
7. ‘In Love with Geometry’? 36
371 Proofs of Pythagoras 42
8. ‘Imagine my Exultation, Watson . . .’ 44
9. Congruence and Similarity 50
The Golden Ratio 58
10. Conversely . . . 60
11. Circle Theorems 68
12. Off at a Tangent 73
13. From Tangents to Supersonic Flow 79
Galileo and Thales’ Theorem 84
14. What is π, Exactly? 86
15. The Story of the Ellipse 94
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vi CON T E N T S

16. Geometry by Coordinates 101

Inspector Euclid Investigates... 106
17. Geometry and Calculus 108
18. A Royal Road to Geometry? 114
19. Unexpected Meetings 122
20. Ceva’s Theorem 129
Some Further Slices of Pi 136
21. A Kind of Symmetry 138
22. ‘Pyracy’ in Woolwich? 145
23. Fermat’s Problem 154
24. A Soap Solution 164
25. Geometry in The Ladies’ Diary 171
Euclid, 1847 178
26. What Euclid Did 180
27. Euclid on Parallel Lines 189
Proof by Picture? 196
28. ‘A New Theory of Parallels’? 198
29. Anti-Euclid? 205
30. When Geometry Goes Wrong . . . 213
31. New Angles on Geometry 223
32. And Finally . . . 231
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CON T E N T S vii

Notes 241
Further Reading 265
Acknowledgements 269
Publisher’s Acknowledgements 270
Picture Credits 271
Index 273
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 30/07/20, SPi

Introduction

It all started at school, one cold winter morning in 1956,

when I was ten.
Mr. Harding had been doing some maths at the blackboard,
with chalk dust raining down everywhere, when he suddenly
whirled round and told us all to draw a semicircle, with
diameter AB.
Then we had to choose some point P on the semicircle, join
it to A and B by straight lines, and measure the angle at P (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 Thales’ theorem.

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2 I N T RODUC T ION

I duly got on with all this, casually assuming that the angle
at P would depend on where P is, exactly, on the semicircle.
But it doesn’t.
It’s always 90°.
* * *
At the time, I had no idea that mathematics is full of surprises
like this.
I had no idea, either, that this is one of the first great theorems
of geometry, due to a mathematician called Thales, in ancient
Greece. And according to Thales – so it is said – the key question
is always not ‘What do we know?’ but rather ‘How do we know it?’
Why is it, then, that the angle in a semicircle is always 90°?
The short answer is that we can prove it, by a sequence of
simple logical steps, from a few apparently obvious starting
assumptions.

Fig. 2 The importance of proof.

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I N T RODUC T ION 3

And by doing just that, in the next few pages, I hope to not
only lay some foundations for geometry, but do something
far more ambitious.
For, with geometry, it is possible to see something of the
whole nature and spirit of mathematics at its best, at almost
any age, within just half an hour of starting.
And in case you don’t quite believe me…
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Getting Started

The first really major idea is that of parallel lines.

These are lines, in the same plane, which never meet, no
matter how far they are extended.
And I will make two assumptions about them.

Parallel lines
Imagine, if you will, two lines crossed by a third line, produ-
cing the so-called corresponding angles of Fig. 3.

Fig. 3 Corresponding angles.

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GE T T I NG S TA RT E D 5

Then, throughout most of this book, I will assume that

(1) If two lines are parallel, the corresponding angles are
equal.
(2) If corresponding angles are equal, the two lines are
parallel.
These assumptions are rooted in the intuitive notion that
parallel lines must be, so to speak, ‘in the same direction’, but
however obvious (1) and (2) may seem, they are assumptions.
And, even at this early stage, it is worth noting that they
amount to two very different statements.
In effect, (1) helps us use parallel lines, while (2) helps us
show that we have some.

Angles
We will measure angles in degrees, denoted by °, and the two
parts of a straight line through some point P form an angle of
180° (Fig. 4).

180˚

Fig. 4 A straight line.

A right angle is half this, i.e. an angle of 90°, and the two
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6 GE T T I NG S TA RT E D

Fig. 5 Right angles.

lines forming it are then said to be perpendicular (Fig. 5).

Opposite angles
When two straight lines intersect, the so-called opposite angles
are equal (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6 Opposite angles.

Alternate angles
If two lines are parallel, and crossed by a third line, then the
so-called alternate angles are equal (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7 Alternate angles.

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GE T T I NG S TA RT E D 7

b
c

Fig. 8 Proof that alternate angles are equal.

This is because, in Fig. 8, a = b (corresponding angles) and

b = c (opposite angles). So a = c.
The argument works ‘in reverse’, too, so that if alternate
angles are equal, the two lines must be parallel.
And with these ideas in place, we are now ready to prove
the first theorem which, in my view, is not obvious at all . . .

The angle-sum of a triangle

The three angles in any triangle add up to 180° (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9 Angles in a triangle.

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8 GE T T I NG S TA RT E D

To prove this, draw a straight line through one corner,

parallel to the opposite side (Fig. 10).

a b
c

a b

Fig. 10 Proof of the angle-sum of a triangle.

The angles a are then equal (alternate angles).

The angles b are also equal, for the same reason.
Finally, the new line is straight, so a + b + c = 180°, which
completes the proof.
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Euclid’s Elements

The most famous example of geometry being presented in this

concise, deductive, and carefully ordered way is the Elements,
written by Euclid of Alexandria (Fig. 11), in about 300 BC.

Fig. 11 Euclid.
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10 E UC L I D’S E L E M E N T S

It is best to be clear from the outset, I think, that the precise

theorems and proofs of Euclid’s Elements (Fig. 12) are essen-
tially about imaginary objects.

Fig. 12 The oldest surviving copy of Euclid’s Elements, MS

D’Orville 301, copied by Stephen the Clerk for Arethas of Patras,
in Constantinople in AD 888.

A Euclidean straight line, for instance, isn’t just ‘perfectly’

straight—it has zero thickness. So even if I could draw one
properly, you wouldn’t be able to see it.
And a point isn’t a blob of small dimension—it has no
dimension at all. Or, as Euclid put it:

A point is that which has no part.

It should be said, too, that Euclid makes no use of what we

would call ‘measurement units’ for length. And there are no
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E UC L I D’S E L E M E N T S 11

degrees in Euclid; the nearest he comes to having a unit for

angle is the concept of right angle, which he uses a great deal
(Fig. 13).

Fig. 13 Proof that opposite angles are equal, from a 1732 edition
of Euclid’s Elements.

In spite of this, and the austere style of exposition, the

Elements has had more influence, and more editions, than
almost any other book in human history.
In the end, however, there can be no single ‘best’ way of
doing geometry, and we all have to find our own path into the
subject.
And if, in this book, I unashamedly assume more than
Euclid does, it is because I want to proceed more quickly to
interesting and surprising results . . .
Euclid, 1732

One of the most popular early editions

of Euclid was by Isaac Barrow. It was
first published in 1660 , but my own copy
dates from 1732 .
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Thales’ Theorem

Thales’ theorem says that the angle in a semicircle is always 90º.

And, to prove it, we need just one or two more key ideas.

Congruent triangles
Congruent triangles are ones which have exactly the same size
and shape.
And the most obvious way of fixing the exact size and
shape of a triangle is, perhaps, to specify the lengths of two
sides and the angle between them.
This leads to a very simple test for congruence, known
informally as ‘side-angle-side’, or SAS (Fig. 14).

Fig. 14 Congruence by SAS.

Isosceles triangles
An isosceles triangle is one in which two sides are equal.
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T H A L E S’ T H EOR E M 15

Triangles of this kind play a major part in geometry, largely

because the ‘base’ angles of an isosceles triangle are equal (Fig. 15).

A B Fig. 15 An isosceles triangle.

Many people, I think, find this particular result rather obvi-

ous. After all, if we ‘nip round the back’ of an isosceles tri-
angle it will look exactly the same.
A more formal way of proving the result is to introduce the
line CD bisecting the angle at C (Fig. 16).

Fig. 16 Proof that the base angles of an

A D B isosceles triangle are equal.

The triangles ACD and BCD are then congruent by SAS,

and one is, in fact, a ‘mirror image’ or ‘overturned’ version
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16 T H A L E S’ T H EOR E M

of the other. In particular, then, the angles at A and B must

be equal.
(If all three sides of a triangle happen to be equal it is said to
be equilateral. The triangle is then isosceles in three different
ways, so all three of its angles are equal.)

Circles
The defining property of a circle is that all its points are the
same distance from one particular point, called the centre, O.
Some other common terminology is introduced in Fig. 17.

circumference
us
di
ra

O diameter
chord

Fig. 17 The circle.

And this gives us all we need to prove Thales’ theorem.

Thales’ theorem
We want to prove that if P is any point on the semicircle in
Fig. 18, then ÐAPB = 90°, where ÐAPB denotes the angle
between AP and PB.
Now, the simplest way of using the fact that P lies on the
semicircle, surely, is to draw in the line OP and observe that
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T H A L E S’ T H EOR E M 17

Fig. 18 Proof of Thales’ theorem.

OP = OA = OB, because all points on a circle are the same

distance from its centre.
Suddenly, then, we have two isosceles triangles, AOP and BOP.
The two ‘base angles’ a are therefore equal, and so are the
two base angles b.
Finally, the three angles of the large triangle APB must add
up to 180°, so
a + ( a + b ) + b = 180°
and therefore a + b = 90°. In consequence, ÐAPB = 90°,
which proves the theorem.
And in all the years since I first saw this proof, on a cold
winter morning in 1956, I have never forgotten it.
After all, the result is, at first sight, rather difficult to believe,
yet just a few minutes later we find ourselves saying, argu-
ably: ‘Oh, it’s sort of obvious, really, isn’t it—when you look at it
the right way.’
And in my experience, at least, this is often one of the hall-
marks of mathematics at its best.
 a t i c a l w orld of
the m athem E EC E
N T G R
ANCIE

Rome

the greek empire

Athens Miletus
Crotona Samos

Syracuse

Mediterranean Sea
Alexandria

Thales lived in Miletus.

Pythagoras came from the island of Samos,
but later moved to Crotona.

Thales
Pythagoras
Euclid
Archimedes
B.C. −500 −400 −300 −200 −100 0
Plato’s Academy in Athens had this famous
inscription over its entrance:

ΑΓΕΩΜΕΤΡΗΤΟΣ
ΜΗΔΕΙΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ
“Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here”

The Pharos Lightouse, Alexandria

Euclid wrote The Elements in Alexandria.

Archimedes lived and worked in Syracuse.
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Geometry in Action

Throughout history there have been practical applications

of geometry, and one of the earliest was Thales’ attempt to
calculate the height of the Great Pyramid in Egypt.

Thales and similar triangles

Thales measured the shadow of the Great Pyramid cast by the
Sun, and by adding half the pyramid’s base determined the
distance L in Fig. 19.

Fig. 19 Similar triangles.