Euclidian Shape

Making A Math Shape

You gotta check this out.

Euclid was a famous mathematician. He was alive oh so long ago – around 300bce – and he wrote a book called “The Elements” which is one of the most foundational books of math and geometry. There are famous ideas in it, called axioms and others called propositions. One of the ideas is this: “a line is a length without breadth” – What does THAT mean?

Well, think about it. A line connects two points in length, but it doesn’t necessarily define a width. Is it a fat line? A narrow line?

Wowsa. That is something to think about.

There is a cool website that shows one of the drawings of Euclid, with two circles and a triangle, and an online drawing tool that can draw circles and triangles. This site offers an opportunity to draw this Euclidian shape. The webpage has a funny name, “Euclid Walks the Plank”.

See if you can draw the shape yourself.