A Property of Equiangular Polygons

Kevin An, (Kevin Peng, editor)

The discovery of an invariant property of equiangular polygons first arose from the fact that the sum of the
distances from a point to the sides of an equilateral (or equiangular) triangle is constant. This idea was first
generalized first to regular polygons, and afterwards to equiangular polygons. This paper will attempt to
show these generalizations.

Theorem. The sum of the distances from any point in an equiangular polygon to the sides of the equian-
gular polygon is constant.

Before we can move on to the proof, we must first show an analogous theorem for regular polygons.

Lemma. The sum of the distances from a point in a regular polygon to the sides of the regular polygon is
constant.

Proof: It is a well known fact that for a regular n-gon with side length s

1
A= asn
2

where A is defined as the area of the regular polygon and a (short for apothem) is defined to be the distance
between the center of the regular n-gon and any side of the regular n-gon. Note that a is constant for a
given regular n-gon due to symmetry.

Given a point P in the interior of the polygon, let hi denote the lengths of the perpendicular line segments
drawn to the sides of the n-gon, where 1 ≤ i ≤ n. We can express the area of the n-gon by adding up the
areas of the smaller triangles formed by the center and adjacent vertices of the n-gon. Namely,

n
1 X
A= s hi
2 i=1

1
 * This shows the case for a regular hexagon

By setting these two formulas equal, we have

n
1 X 1
s hi = asn
2 i=1 2
n
X
hi = an
i=1

which is a constant since both a and n are constant.

We can see that this argument fails to work for the equiangular n-gon case, since there is no constant value
a. However, with the lemma and some additional constructions, we are ready to take on the theorem itself.

Proof: Assume the n-gon is equiangular but not regular. First, we label the vertices of the n-gon A1 , A2 ,...,
An in such a way so that A1 A2 is the longest side of the n-gon. We then extend A1 An and A2 A3 to each
have length A1 A2 , resulting in two new line segments, A1 A0n and A2 A03 . From the fours points A0n , A1 , A2 ,
and A03 , we can create the regular n-gon that bounds our equiangular n-gon and includes these four points
as vertices, resulting in

* The ellipsis denotes any additional sides of the polygon.

Note that the corresponding sides of the n-gons are parallel because all angles are equal. Let ki denote the
distances between Ai Ai+1 and A0i A0i+1 . Since the corresponding sides of the equiangular and constructed
equiangular polygons are parallel, ki ’s are constant for any pair of corresponding sides. Now, we pick an
arbitrary point P in the interior of the equiangular n-gon and apply the lemma (P is also interior to the
regular n-gon since the regular n-gon contains all of the equiangular n-gon). Let li denote the perpendicular
distances from P to Ai Ai+1 . We then have the equation

2
 n
X n
X n
X
li = hi − ki
i=1 i=1 k=1

since

li = hi − ki
(This is because li and ki are perpendicular distances to Ai Ai+1 ).
n
X n
X n
X
This concludes the proof, as both ki and hi are constants, and thus li is a constant.
k=1 i=1 i=1