Robbins' formulas, the Bellows conjecture + polyhedra volumes|Rational Geometry Math Foundations 128

4,060 views · Published 11 February 2015 · 34:25 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Insights into Mathematics · 2015 · Education

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We discuss modern developments in the direction of our latest videos, namely formulas for areas of polygons in terms of the quadrances of the sides. We discuss work of Moebius, Bowman and Robbins on the areas of cyclic pentagons.

There is also a rich story about 3 dimensional generalizations of Heron's formula or Archimedes' theorem to polyhedra: going back to Tartaglia for the case of the tetrahedron, connecting with a rigidity theorem of Cauchy, a remarkable example of R. Connelly, the so-called Bellows Conjecture, and its lovely resolution by I. Sabitov. 

We will see throughout that it is really the quadrances of sides, not the lengths of sides, which these formulas are based on. The intrinsic algebraic aspect of this kind of geometry comes to the fore.

Video Content:
00:00 Intro to area formulas for polygons
2:30 Cyclic quadrilateral quadrea theorem
4:46 Brahmagupta's formula of cyclic pentagon
7:13 F. Bowman 1952
15:56 Tartaglia's Formula
20:43 Euler rediscovered Tartaglia's formula
25:18 Flexible polyhedron
30:37 Octahedra

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