TITLE:
A Procedure for Trisecting an Acute Angle (Method 2)
AUTHORS:
Lyndon O. Barton
KEYWORDS:
Archimedes’ Construction, College Geometry, College Mathematics, Angle Trisection, Famous Problems in Mathematics, Mechanism Analysis, Geometer’s Sketch Pad
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Pure Mathematics,
Vol.14 No.4,
April
10,
2024
ABSTRACT: This paper presents an alternate graphical procedure (Method 2), to that presented in earlier publications entitled, “A Procedure for Trisecting an Acute Angle” and “A Key to Solving the Angle Trisection Problem”. The procedure, when applied to the 30˚ and 60˚ angles that have been “proven” to be nottrisectable and the 45˚ benchmark angle that is known to be trisectable, in each case produced a construction having an identical angular relationship with Archimedes’ Construction, as in Section 2 on THEORY of this paper, where the required trisection angle was found to be one-third of its respective angle (i.e. DE’MA = 1/3 DE’CG). For example, the trisection angle for the 30˚, 45˚ and 60˚ angles were 10.00000˚, 15.00000˚, and 20.00000˚, respectively, and Section 5 on PROOF in this paper. Therefore, based on this identical angular relationship and the numerical results (i.e. to five decimal places), which represent the highest degree of accuracy and precision attainable by The Geometer’s Sketch Pad software, one can only conclude that not only the geometric requirements for arriving at an exact trisection of the 30˚ and 60˚ angle (which have been “proven” to be not-trisectable) have been met, but also, the construction is valid for any arbitrary acute angle, despite theoretical proofs to the contrary by Wantzel, Dudley, and others.