Pythagorean Theorem

In mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem (in American English) or Pythagoras' theorem (in British English) is a relation in Euclidean geometry among the three sides of a right triangle (right-angled triangle in British English). It states: In any right triangle, the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares whose sides are the two legs (the two sides that meet at a right angle). The theorem can be written as an equation:

where c represents the length of the hypotenuse, and a and b represent the lengths of the other two sides. The Pythagorean theorem is named after the Greek mathematician Pythagoras, who by tradition is credited with its discovery and proof,[1] although it is often argued that knowledge of the theory predates him. (There is much evidence that Babylonian mathematicians understood the principle, if not the mathematical significance.)

In formulae
If we let c be the length of the hypotenuse and a and b be the lengths of the other two sides, the theorem can be expressed as the equation:

or, solved for c:

If c is already given, and the length of one of the legs must be found, the following equations (which are corollaries of the first) can be used:

or

This equation provides a simple relation among the three sides of a right triangle so that if the lengths of any two sides are known, the length of the third side can be found. A generalization of this theorem is the law of cosines, which allows the computation of the length of the third side of any triangle, given the lengths of two sides and the size of the angle between them. If the angle between the sides is a right angle it reduces to the Pythagorean theore

Proofs
This is a theorem that may have more known proofs than any other (the law of quadratic reciprocity being also a contender for that distinction); the book Pythagorean Proposition, by Elisha Scott Loomis, contains 367 proofs.

Proof using similar triangles

Proof using similar triangles Like most of the proofs of the Pythagorean theorem, this one is based on the proportionality of the sides of two similar triangles. Let ABC represent a right triangle, with the right angle located at C, as shown on the figure. We draw the altitude from point C, and call H its intersection with the side AB. The new triangle ACH is similar to our triangle ABC, because they both have a right angle (by definition of the altitude), and they share the angle at A, meaning that the third angle will be the same in both triangles as well. By a similar reasoning, the triangle CBH is also similar to ABC. The similarities lead to the two ratios:

These can be written as

Summing these two equalities, we obtain