Sum of angles of a triangle The relation between angular defect and the triangle's area was first proven by Johann Heinrich Lambert. One can easily see how hyperbolic geometry breaks Playfair's axiom, Proclus' axiom (the parallelism, defined as non-intersection, is intransitive in an hyperbolic plane), the equidistance postulate (the points on one side of, and equidistant from, a given line do not form a line), and Pythagoras' theorem. A circle cannot have arbitrarily small curvature, so the three points property also fails. The sum of the angles can be arbitrarily small (but positive). For an ideal triangle, a generalization of hyperbolic triangles, this sum is equal
Missing square puzzle Missing square puzzle The missing square puzzle is an optical illusion used in mathematics classes to help students reason about geometrical figures; or rather to teach them not to reason using figures, but to use only textual descriptions and the axioms of geometry. It depicts two arrangements made of similar shapes in slightly different configurations. Each apparently forms a 13×5 right-angled triangle, but one has a 1×1 hole in it. The key to the puzzle is the fact that neither of the 13×5 "triangles" is truly a triangle, because what appears to be the hypotenuse is bent. In other words,