TECH-MUSINGS

Thoughts On Algorithms, Geometry etc...

Friday, November 27, 2020

Some thoughts on Monsky's Theorem

Monsky's Theorem: It is not possible to dissect a square into an odd number of triangles all of equal area.

Definitions: The diameter of a planar convex region is the greatest distance between any pair of points in the region. The least width of a 2D convex region can be defined as the least distance between any pair of parallel lines that touch the region.

Questions: Is it possible to dissect a square into any odd number of triangles all of equal perimeter/ equal diameter/ equal least width? Do negative answers to these questions follow from any proof(s) of Monsky's theorem?

Found this earlier discussion that addresses the equal perimeter question: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2822589/dissect-square-into-triangles-of-same-perimeter. There, Christian Blatter says: "The proof (of Monsky's theorem) is not easy, and some authors even take recourse to the axiom of choice for a proof. Anyway: To obtain a theorem about an odd number of triangles of equal perimeter should be even more difficult since square roots are entering the picture."

It is also seen quite easily that a square can be divided into n equal diameter triangles very easily for any n (for even n, divide the square into n/2 rectangular strips and cut each strip with a diagonal in half; for odd n, divide the square into n-2 isosceles triangles and 2 right triangles all with same diameter).

That leaves only the partition of the square into n triangles all of same least width.

Note added on June 6th 2021:

One more question: Is there any quadrilataral at all that allows partition into n equal area triangles where n is *any* integer? Or is the square/rectangle that quad that gives an upper bound on the possible n values? And which quad gives the lower bound?

Monday, November 09, 2020

Non-Congruent Tilings - 9

Let me add a bit more to this earlier post in the non-congruent tiling series: http://nandacumar.blogspot.com/2018/11/non-congruent-tilings-of-plane-bit-more.html

This was the main question raised there (I still have no ideas):
If one looks for tiling the plane with non-congruent triangles of equal area and equal diameter (diameter of a triangle is its longest side) what happens?

Even if one requires that the mutually non-congruent triangles that tile the plane ought to have equal diameter and perimeter, the existence of such a tiling is not clear. Of course, one has an uncountable infinity of triangles all with same diameter and perimeter but whether one can tile the plane without gaps using a mutually noncongruent selection from them is not obvious.

More generally, one can ask if the mutually non-congruent tiles have all to be chosen from a one parameter family with the parameter values chosen from a finite and continuous 1D range (maybe with size 0 tiles disallowed), then, no tiling of the plane can happen.

And as usual, we can ask about non-Euclidean equivalents of these questions.