Area of a circle "ds" over the whole circle formula_33 is just the arc length, which is its circumference, so this shows that the area "A" enclosed by the circle is equal to formula_34 times the circumference of the circle. Note that the area of a semicircle of radius r can be computed by the integral formula_35. By trigonometric substitution, we substitute formula_36, hence formula_37 The last step follows since the trigonometric identity formula_42 implies that formula_43 and formula_44 have equal integrals over the interval formula_45, using integration by substitution. But on the other hand, since formula_46, the sum of the two integrals is
Area of a circle good approximation to the circumference. To compute "u" and "U" for large "n", Archimedes derived the following doubling formulae: Starting from a hexagon, Archimedes doubled "n" four times to get a 96-gon, which gave him a good approximation to the circumference of the circle. In modern notation, we can reproduce his computation (and go further) as follows. For a unit circle, an inscribed hexagon has "u" = 6, and a circumscribed hexagon has "U" = 4. Doubling seven times yields The last entry of the table has ⁄ as one of its best rational approximations; i.e., there is no better