Monday, 21 October 2013

geometry - Vector path length of a hypotenuse

Figure 1




Consider the red path from A that zigzags to B, which takes n even steps of length w. The path length of the route Pn will be equal to:



Pn=Px+Py=n2×w+n2×w=n×w



But n2×w=1 beacuse it is the length of one of the sides of the triangle so:



Pn=2



Which will be true no matter how many steps you take. However in the limit n,w0 the parth length P suddenly becomes:




P=12+12=2



Due to Pythagoras. Why is this the case? It seems the path length suddenly decreases by 0.59!

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