Langley’s Adventitious Angles Langley’s Adventitious Angles Langley’s Adventitious Angles is a mathematical problem posed by Edward Mann Langley in "The Mathematical Gazette" in 1922. In its original form the problem was as follows: formula_1 is an isosceles triangle. A solution was developed by James Mercer in 1923. This solution involves drawing one additional line, and then making repeated use of the fact that the internal angles of a triangle add up to 180° to prove that several triangles drawn within the large triangle are all isosceles. Many other solutions are possible. Cut the Knot list twelve different solutions and several alternative problems with
Skinny triangle the stations could be on opposite sides of the Earth. However, this distance is still short compared to the distance to the object being measured (the height of the triangle) and the skinny triangle solution can be applied and still achieve great accuracy. The alternative method of measuring the base angles is theoretically possible but not so accurate. The base angles are very nearly right angles and would need to be measured with much greater precision than the parallax angle in order to get the same accuracy. The same method of measuring parallax angles and applying the skinny triangle can