Tuesday, March 24, 2009

BLOG ENTRY #1

The question that am investigating is, Pythagorean triples are right triangles that have integer side lengths. how many of these are there? can you predict when they will occur?
When i began investigating i started by listing the the Pythagorean Triples that Ms.sheppherd-brick listed for us in the packet for week 27. I have not yet found out a pattern to figure out how you can predict when Pythagorean Triples will occur but did learn how you can find Pythagorean Triples with this equation,"take any 2 numbers, find 2 times their product, the sum of their squares, than the difference of their squares and the three different numbers that show up are going to be a Pythagorean Triple." (Diophantus) To prove that Diophantus's formula was correct I tried it out. Although the Pythagorean Triples 3-4-5 was giving to me in the week 27 packet, i also figured it out using Diophantus's formula.
  1. 1*8*2= 4
  2. 1^2+2^2= 1+4= 5
  3. 2^2-1^2= 3
In the list below I figured out some Pythagorean Triples using his formula.
  • 3-4-5
  • 6-8-10
  • 9-12-15
  • 12-13-16
  • 10-24-26
  • 5-12-13
  • 7-24-25
  • 8-15-17
  • 16-30-34
  • 20-21-29
  • 16-65-63
  • 12-16-20
  • 72-135-153
  • 5-12-13
  • 24-143-145
  • 9-40-41
  • 10-24-26
Although i didn't find a pattern when trying to point out Pythagorean Triples, i did notice that when checking to see if the 3 numbers were actually Pythagorean Triples i had to add the 2 smaller squared numbers and get the sum. Then i had to find the square of the largest number and in all my cases the sum and the squared was equal proving that they were Pythagorean Triples. Below is what i did to prove the Triples.(visually)
  1. 4^2+3^2= 25
  2. 5^2= 25
Since 3 and 4 were the smallest numbers out of the Triples i squared them, then i found the sum of their squares. After i took the highest number which was 5 and squared it. As you seen above they equaled the same meaning that they are a Pythagorean Triple.
As stated before i still haven't found a way to predict when Pythagorean Triples will occur but i will continue to do research and look for patterns within the Triples that i do have and can figure out.

1 comment:

  1. You have a lot of good information here. Can you tell if any of the triples are related to each other - in other words, can you get one triple from another one using a mathematical operation? Are there patterns that only occur in the ones that start with even numbers or that only occur in the ones that start with odd numbers?

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