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
Langley’s Adventitious Angles the same 80-80-20 triangle but different internal angles. A quadrilateral such as BCEF in which the angles formed by the diagonals with the sides are all rational (when measured in degrees) is called an adventitious quadrangle. Numerous constructions for other adventitious quadrangles beyond the one appearing in Langley's puzzle are known. They form several infinite families and an additional set of sporadic examples. Classifying the adventitious quadrangles (which need not be convex) turns out to be equivalent to classifying all triple intersections of diagonals in regular polygons. This was solved by Gerrit Bol in 1936 (Beantwoording van prijsvraag # 17,