The Pythagoras tree is a

plane Plane(s) most often refers to: * Aero- or airplane, a powered, fixed-wing aircraft * Plane (geometry), a flat, 2-dimensional surface Plane or planes may also refer to: Biology * Plane (tree) or ''Platanus'', wetland native plant * Planes (gen ...

fractal In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illu ...

constructed from

squares In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length adj ...

. Invented by the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

teacher Albert E. Bosman in 1942, it is named after the

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

mathematician

Pythagoras Pythagoras of Samos ( grc, Πυθαγόρας ὁ Σάμιος, Pythagóras ho Sámios, Pythagoras the Samos, Samian, or simply ; in Ionian Greek; ) was an ancient Ionians, Ionian Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher and the eponymou ...

because each triple of touching squares encloses a

right triangle A right triangle (American English) or right-angled triangle (British), or more formally an orthogonal triangle, formerly called a rectangled triangle ( grc, ὀρθόσγωνία, lit=upright angle), is a triangle in which one angle is a right an ...

, in a configuration traditionally used to depict the

Pythagorean theorem In mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem or Pythagoras' theorem is a fundamental relation in Euclidean geometry between the three sides of a right triangle. It states that the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite t ...

. If the largest square has a size of ''L'' × ''L'', the entire Pythagoras tree fits snugly inside a box of size 6''L'' × 4''L''.Wisfaq.nl
The finer details of the tree resemble the

Lévy C curve In mathematics, the Lévy C curve is a self-similar fractal curve that was first described and whose differentiability properties were analysed by Ernesto Cesàro in 1906 and Georg Faber in 1910, but now bears the name of French mathematician Pa ...

Construction

The construction of the Pythagoras tree begins with a

square In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length adj ...

. Upon this square are constructed two squares, each scaled down by a linear factor of /2, such that the corners of the squares coincide pairwise. The same procedure is then applied

recursively Recursion (adjective: ''recursive'') occurs when a thing is defined in terms of itself or of its type. Recursion is used in a variety of disciplines ranging from linguistics to logic. The most common application of recursion is in mathematics ...

to the two smaller squares, ''ad infinitum''. The illustration below shows the first few

iteration Iteration is the repetition of a process in order to generate a (possibly unbounded) sequence of outcomes. Each repetition of the process is a single iteration, and the outcome of each iteration is then the starting point of the next iteration. ...

s in the construction process. This is the simplest symmetric triangle. Alternatively, the sides of the triangle are recursively equal proportions, leading to the sides being proportional to the square root of the inverse golden ratio, and the areas of the squares being in golden ratio proportion.

Area

Iteration ''n'' in the construction adds 2^''n'' squares of area

\tfrac

, for a total area of 1. Thus the area of the tree might seem to grow without bound in the limit as ''n'' → ∞. However, some of the squares overlap starting at the order 5 iteration, and the tree actually has a finite area because it fits inside a 6×4 box. It can be shown easily that the area ''A'' of the Pythagoras tree must be in the range 5 < ''A'' < 18, which can be narrowed down further with extra effort. Little seems to be known about the actual value of ''A''.

Varying the angle

An interesting set of variations can be constructed by maintaining an isosceles triangle but changing the base angle (90 degrees for the standard Pythagoras tree). In particular, when the base half-angle is set to (30°) = arcsin(0.5), it is easily seen that the size of the squares remains constant. The first overlap occurs at the fourth iteration. The general pattern produced is the

rhombitrihexagonal tiling In geometry, the rhombitrihexagonal tiling is a semiregular tiling of the Euclidean plane. There are one triangle, two squares, and one hexagon on each vertex. It has Schläfli symbol of rr. John Conway calls it a rhombihexadeltille.Conway, 2 ...

, an array of hexagons bordered by the constructing squares. In the limit where the half-angle is 90 degrees, there is obviously no overlap, and the total area is twice the area of the base square. It would be interesting to know if there's an algorithmic relationship between the value of the base half-angle and the iteration at which the squares first overlap each other.

History

The Pythagoras tree was first constructed by Albert E. Bosman (1891–1961), a

mathematics teacher, in 1942.Arsetmathesis.nl

References

External links

Gallery of Pythagoras trees

Interactive generator with code
*
''Pythagoras Tree''
by Enrique Zeleny based on a program by

Eric W. Weisstein Eric Wolfgang Weisstein (born March 18, 1969) is an American mathematician and encyclopedist who created and maintains the encyclopedias ''MathWorld'' and ''ScienceWorld''. In addition, he is the author of the '' CRC Concise Encyclopedia of M ...

, The

Wolfram Demonstrations Project The Wolfram Demonstrations Project is an organized, open-source collection of small (or medium-size) interactive programs called Demonstrations, which are meant to visually and interactively represent ideas from a range of fields. It is hos ...