Mechanism for Constructing Regular Polygons

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System
Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.
This Demonstration shows a hinged mechanism for constructing regular -gons,
. The mechanism is constructed as follows. The fixed hinges are at
,
,
,
,
,
, and
, while the hinges at
and
slide along
and
respectively, and
is the midpoint of
. The mechanism contains congruent parallelograms
and
and two isosceles trapezoids
and
. This ensures that the sides
,
,
, and
have the same length and that angles
,
, and
are equal.
Contributed by: Izidor Hafner (November 2012)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Snapshots
Details
Reference
[1] B. A. Kordemsky, The Moscow Puzzles, London: Penguin Books, 1990, pp. 79–81.
Permanent Citation