A Robbins pentagon is a cyclic polygon with 5 integer sides
and integer area. The one shown above is the one with the smallest
area amongst those with five distinct sides. It also has the
property that all
its diagonals are rational which means that it can be decomposed
into Heron triangles. The converse is not necessarily true---namely, three
Heron triangles cannot always be glued together in such a way that
their exterior vertices lie on a circle. It is unknown whether or
not an indecomposible Robbins pentagon exists.
|
Ralph Buchholz
05 September 2008