BELIEVE ME NOT! -
- A SKEPTICs GUIDE
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The square of the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle
is equal to the sum of the squares of the lengths of the two
shorter sides.
I.e. for the Left Hemisphere we have
where a, b and c are defined by the labelled picture
of a right triangle, shown in Fig. 4.2,
which cathects the Right Hemisphere and gets the two working together.
Figure:
A right triangle with hypotenuse c and short sides a and b.
The right angle is indicated and the angle
is defined as shown.
Note that a is always the (length of the) side ``across from'' the
vertex forming the angle
.
This convention is essential
in the trigonometric definitions to follow.
![\begin{figure}
\begin{center}\mbox{
\epsfig{file=PS/pythag.ps,height=2.0in} }\end{center}\end{figure}](img11.gif) |
Jess H. Brewer
1998-09-06