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.
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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.
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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.