Log24: The Journal of Steven H. Cullinane

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Triangles Are Square

m759 @ 11:30 AM

Coming across John H. Conway's 1991*
pinwheel  triangle decomposition this morning—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120112-ConwayTriangleDecomposition.jpg

— suggested a review of a triangle decomposition result from 1984:

IMAGE- Triangle and square, each with 16 parts

Figure A

(Click the below image to enlarge.)

IMAGE- 'Triangles Are Square,' by Steven H. Cullinane (American Mathematical Monthly, 1985)

The above 1985 note immediately suggests a problem—

What mappings of a square  with c 2 congruent parts 
to a triangle  with c 2 congruent parts are "natural"?**

(In Figure A above, whether the 322,560 natural transformations
of the 16-part square map in any natural way to transformations
of the 16-part triangle is not immediately apparent.)

* Communicated to Charles Radin in January 1991. The Conway
  decomposition may, of course, have been discovered much earlier.

** Update of Jan. 18, 2012— For a trial solution to the inverse
    problem, see the "Triangles are Square" page at finitegeometry.org.