Area of a circle each polygon side is a radius, of length "r". And since the total side length is greater than the circumference, the polygon consists of "n" identical triangles with total area greater than "T". Again we have a contradiction, so our supposition that "C" might be less than "T" must be wrong as well. Therefore, it must be the case that the area enclosed by the circle is precisely the same as the area of the triangle. This concludes the proof. Following Satō Moshun and Leonardo da Vinci , we can use inscribed regular polygons in a different way. Suppose we
Area of a circle formula_53. The calculations Archimedes used to approximate the area numerically were laborious, and he stopped with a polygon of 96 sides. A faster method uses ideas of Willebrord Snell ("Cyclometricus", 1621), further developed by Christiaan Huygens ("De Circuli Magnitudine Inventa", 1654), described in . Given a circle, let "u" be the perimeter of an inscribed regular "n-"gon, and let "U" be the perimeter of a circumscribed regular "n-"gon. Then "u" and "U" are lower and upper bounds for the circumference of the circle that become sharper and sharper as "n" increases, and their average ("u" + "U")/2 is an especially