Applied Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 7, 2013, no.

32, 1557 - 1561

HIKARI Ltd, www.m-hikari.com

Triangles in Regular Heptagons

Banyat Sroysang

Department of Mathematics and Statistics,

Faculty of Science and Technology,
Thammasat University, Pathumthani 12121 Thailand
banyat@mathstat.sci.tu.ac.th

Copyright © 2013 Banyat Sroysang. This is an open access article distributed under the
Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

In this paper, we show that the regular heptagon of diameter one is the
smallest regular heptagon which contains all triangles of perimeter
two.
Mathematics Subject Classification: 52C15

Keywords: Cover, Heptagon, Triangle, Worm Problem

1 Introduction and Preliminaries

A cover for a family of arcs is a convex region containing a congruent copy
of every arc in the family. Wetzel [5-6] determined both the smallest equilateral
triangular cover and the smallest rectangular cover for the family of all triangles
of perimeter two. In 2000, Furedi and Wetzel [1] determined the smallest convex
cover for the family of all triangles of perimeter two. In 2009, Zhang and Yuan [7]
determined the smallest regularized parallelogram cover for the family of all
triangles of perimeter two. In 2011, Sroysang [3,4] determined the smallest
regularized trapezoid cover for the family of all triangles of perimeter two. In this
paper, we show that the regular heptagon of diameter one is the smallest regular
heptagon which contains all triangles of perimeter two.
The maximum and the minimum of the distance between the two parallel
support lines of the set X are called the diameter of the set X and the thickness of
the set X, respectively. We note that the diameter and the thickness of any triangle
are the length of the longest side and the length of the altitude to the longest side,
2
respectively. Thus, the diameter of any triangle of perimeter two is at least ,
3
1558 B. Sroysang

1
and the thickness of any triangle of perimeter two is at most . Moreover, the
3
diameter of any regular heptagon is the length of the diagonal. Thus, the diameter
of any regular heptagon cover for the family of all triangles of perimeter two is at
least 1.

2 Results

Theorem The smallest regular heptagon cover for the family of all triangles of
perimeter two is the regular heptagon of diameter one (the area is approximately
equal to 0.71974).

Proof. Let R be the regular heptagon of diameter one and let T be a triangle of
perimeter two with the vertices A, B and C such that the angle ∠A is greater than
or equal to the angle ∠B, and the angle ∠B is greater than or equal to the angle
∠C. Let D be a vertex of the regular heptagon R and let P and Q be two points on
the perimeter of the regular heptagon R such that the distance between the vertex
D and the segment PQ is equal to 0.6 and the segment PQ is parallel to a diagonal
of the regular hexagon R as shown in Fig. 1. We note that |PQ| < 0.885. Now, we
divide the triangle T into two cases.
Case 1. The diameter of the triangle T is at most |PQ|.
We note that the distance between the vertex D and the vertex P is greater
than |PQ| as shown in Fig. 1. WLOG, we can put the triangle T into the regular
heptagon R where the segment BC lies on the segment PQ, and C = P. This
implies that the regular heptagon R contains a congruent copy of the triangle T.

Q P

Fig. 1. The segment PQ in the regular heptagon R

Case 2. The diameter of the triangle T is greater than |PQ|.

Triangles in regular heptagons 1559

We note on this case that the thickness of the triangle T is less than 0.34.
WLOG, we can put the triangle T into the regular heptagon R where the
segment BC lies on a diagonal of the regular heptagon R and the vertex A is above
than the segment BC as shown in Fig. 2 or Fig. 3. Now, the vertex A may be in the
regular heptagon R or not in the regular heptagon R.

F
A

E B C

Fig. 2. A triangle T in the regular heptagon R where the vertex A is in R

F
A
B
E C

Fig. 3. A triangle T in the regular heptagon R where the vertex A is not in R

Suppose for a contradiction that the regular heptagon R does not contains the
triangle T as shown in Fig. 3. Let G be the intersection of the segment AC and the
segment EF and let H be the point on the segment BC such that the segment GH is
perpendicular to the segment BC as shown in Fig. 4.
Let x be the length of the segment EH. Then 0 ≤ x < 0.1 and the length of the
⎛ 3π ⎞
segment HC is 1 − x . Note that the angle HEG is equal to arctan ⎜ ⎟ . Then the
⎝ 7 ⎠
⎛ 3π ⎞
length of the segment EF is x tan ⎜ ⎟ .
⎝ 7 ⎠
1560 B. Sroysang

F
A G

E H C
B

Fig. 4. A right triangle GHC in the triangle T and the regular heptagon R

2
⎛ 3π ⎞ ⎛ ⎛ 3π ⎞ ⎞
Define L( x) = 1 − x + x tan ⎜ ⎟ + (1 − x) 2 + ⎜ x tan ⎜ ⎟ ⎟ . Then L( x) is
⎝ 7 ⎠ ⎝ ⎝ 7 ⎠⎠
the total length of the perimeter of the right triangle GHC. By the calculation on
L( x) , we obtain that L( x) ≥ L(0) = 2 as shown in Fig. 5.

2.3

2.25

2.2

2.15

2.1

2.05

0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1

Fig. 5. The graph of L( x) where 0 ≤ x < 0.1

Since the total length of the perimeter of the triangle ABC is greater than the
total length of the perimeter of the right triangle GHC, it follows that the total
length of the perimeter of the triangle T is greater than two. This is a
contradiction. Hence, the regular heptagon R is a cover for the family of all
triangles of perimeter two.
Next, we note that every cover for the family of all triangles of perimeter two
must cover the line segment of length one. Hence, the diagonal of any regular
heptagon cover for the family of all triangles of perimeter two must have length at
least one. The diagonal of the regular heptagon R has length one. Therefore, the
Triangles in regular heptagons 1561

regular heptagon R is a smallest cover for the family of all triangles of perimeter
two.

Acknowledgement. This research was supported by the Thammasat University

Research Fund 2012, Thailand.

References
[1] Z. Furedi and J. E. Wetzel, The smallest convex cover for triangles of
perimeter two, Geom. Dedicata, 81 (2000), 285−293.
[2] L. Moser, Poorly formulated unsolved problems of combinatorial geometry,
Mimeographed (1996).
[3] B. Sroysang, Regularized Trapezoid Cover for Isoperimetric Triangles, Int. J.
Comput. Appl. Math., 6 (2011), 239−245.
[4] B. Sroysang, Right Trapezoid cover for triangles of perimeter two, Kasetsart
J. (Nat. Sci.), 45 (2011), 756−671.
[5] J. E. Wetzel, Boxes for isoperimetric triangles, Math. Mag., 73 (2000),
315−319.
[6] J. E. Wetzel, The smallest equilateral cover for triangles of perimeter two,
Math. Mag., 70 (1997), 125−130.
[7] Y. Zhang and L. Yuan, Parallelogram cover for triangles of perimeter two,
Southeast Asian Bull. Math., 33 (2009), 607−612.

Received: January, 2013