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Subject: "Pyramid volumes"     Previous Topic | Next Topic
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mr_homm
Member since May-22-05
Sep-02-10, 11:16 PM (EST)
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"Pyramid volumes"
 
   Reading Owen Byers' new book (Methods for Euclidean Geometry) today, the following nice relation occured to me. Probably this is well known, so I will present it as a puzzle: Consider a square based pyramid for which every edge is the same length, s, and consider a regular tetrahedron also with every edge of length s. Show using tesselation that their volumes are equal.

Solution below. Perhaps this is also well known. I post it only because it is pretty.















































































Solution: Let the bases of the pyramids tile the plane with squares, draw a second plane through the apexes of the pyramids, and let a second set of inverted pyramids tile this plane with their bases, the corners of each base coinciding with the apexes of the upright pyramids. Since the volume of a pyramid is 1/3·h·(base area), while the volume of a rectangular slab is h·(base area), the pyramids together fill 2/3 of the volume of the slab. The spaces between the pyramids are rather obviously perfect regular tetrahedrons, and since each of these shares a face with 4 pyramids, while each upright pyramid shares a face with 4 tetrahedrons, they are equinumerous. Hence, since they are equal in number and fill the remaining 1/3 of the volume, their individual volumes must be identical to those of the pyramids.


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alexbadmin
Charter Member
2589 posts
Sep-03-10, 05:45 AM (EST)
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1. "RE: Pyramid volumes"
In response to message #0
 
   It's a well known curiosity (https://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Geometry/ThreePyramids.shtml) that the faces of 3- and 4-pyramids align when adjacent faces are glued together.

Let's start with just four 4-pyramids whose bases form a square. The space between any adjacent two can be filled with a 3-pyramid by joining their apexes. These four lines form a base of an inverted 4-pyramid and, if we put one more 4-pyramid on top of that base, we'll get a 4-pyramid twice the size of the original one. This big 4-pyramid consists of 6 small 4-pyramids and four 3-pyramids. If V is the volume of a small 4-pyramid, W that of a 3-pyramid, then

8V = 6V + 4W,

meaning that V = 2W.

Where are the holes (pun intended) in this argument?


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alexbadmin
Charter Member
2589 posts
Sep-03-10, 07:11 AM (EST)
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2. "RE: Pyramid volumes"
In response to message #1
 
   By direct computations (assuming the edge length 1):

The altitude of a 4-pyramid is the altitude of an isosceles triangle with sides sqrt(3)/2, sqrt(3)/2, 1, which is sqrt(2)/2 and

V = sqrt(2)/6.

For a 3-pyramid, the altitude of the pyramid is the altitude to a side in an isosceles triangle with sides sqrt(3)/2, sqrt(3)/2, 1. This altitude equals sqrt(6)/3. With the base area sqrt(3)/4,

W = 1/3 · sqrt(6)/3 · sqrt(3)/4 = sqrt(2)/12,

confirming V = 2W.


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mr_homm
Member since May-22-05
Sep-03-10, 09:33 AM (EST)
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3. "RE: Pyramid volumes"
In response to message #2
 
   Of course, how silly of me! My intuition played me false, as I was thinking of the slightly greater height of the tetrahedron compensating for its slightly smaller base area, when in fact the base area is slightly smaller than 1/2 the base area of a square pyramid with the same edge.

As for my tesselation, it does work, but I was simply inconsistent in my application of the face counting. Each tetrahedron shares faces with 4 pyramids, and each pyramid shares faces with 4 tetrahedra, therefore, the tetrahedra have a 1:1 coordination number with ALL pyramids. Since the tetrahedra occupy 1/3 of the volume, and the pyramids 2/3, they must each have exactly half the volume of a pyramid.

Thanks for pointing out where I went wrong. Finally, I think I like the method you showed better than mine. Simply building a new pyramid twice the size of the original ones makes for a nicer (more finit'stic) demonstration.

--Stuart Anderson


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alexbadmin
Charter Member
2589 posts
Sep-03-10, 09:48 AM (EST)
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4. "RE: Pyramid volumes"
In response to message #3
 
   I must say that, after finding the descrepancy, I played for several minutes with the applet I pointed to. I could not convince myself that visually the volume of the pyramid appears twice that of the tetrahedron. They really look rather equal than one twice the other.


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