Guwahati: Two high school students from New Orleans, Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson, have reportedly demonstrated Pythagoras’ theorem using trigonometry.
The theorem, which has been a fundamental part of mathematics for over 2000 years, relates to the sides of a right triangle and has numerous applications in the design of buildings, bridges, and other structures.
According to scholars, it was previously believed that Pythagoras’ theorem could not be proved using trigonometry due to circular reasoning, a logical fallacy where an idea is proved with the idea itself.
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However, Johnson and Jackson claim to have found new proof of the theorem that is independent of the Pythagorean trig identity sin2x+cos2x=1. Their findings were presented at the American Mathematical Society’s southeastern chapter’s semi-annual meeting in Georgia.
Speaking to local media, Johnson said, “There’s nothing like it – being able to do something that people don’t think that young people can do. You don’t see kids like us doing this – it’s usually, like, you have to be an adult to do this.”
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The two students, who attend St Mary’s Academy in New Orleans’s Plum Orchard area, credited their teachers for pushing them to succeed in a task that mathematics had deemed impossible.
Their work challenges the traditional notion of Pythagoras’ theorem and opens up new possibilities for its application in various fields.