The world’s eminent mathematicians are in awe of teenage American students who claim they have successfully discovered a new method to prove the famous Pythagoras theorem using trigonometry.
Seniors at St. Mary of New Orleans, Calcea Johnson and Ne Kiya Jackson shed light on their recent findings at the Spring Southeast Regional Meeting of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) on March 18.
“Their groundbreaking lecture from this research is historic. High school students are generally not presenters at the Meeting of the American Mathematical Association,” the school said in a statement.
Pythagorean theorem
The famous Pythagorean Theorem is a long-standing theorem that states that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is actually equal to the sum of the squares of the two sides. This theory is expressed worldwide as a2+ b2 = c2. Although this theory is popular and accepted worldwide, there is still no solid evidence as to why this 2,000-year-old theory is correct.
What did the students say?
The students pointed to the fact that ever since trigonometry was discovered, it has been widely believed that all alleged proofs of the famous Pythagoras’ Theorem consistent with trigonometry must be circular. Additionally, they also state that even in the book Pythagorean Propositionlargest collection of proofs, author Elisha Loomis says that there are actually no trigonometric proofs because all the basic formulas of trigonometry are based on the Pythagorean Theorem.
However, the students, with utmost confidence, declared that they could successfully prove the Pythagorean Theorem with the help of trigonometry without any circular reasoning.
“We present a new proof of Pythagoras’s Theorem based on a fundamental result in trigonometry – the Law of Sines – and we show that the proof is independent of the equality Pythagorean trigonometry sin2x+cos2x=1.”
Although the introduction of a new method to prove a long-standing theory is in itself commendable, the evidence has not yet been accepted and sustained.
Categories: Optical Illusion
Source: pagasa.edu.vn