Scissors, Glue, and Hilbert, Too. Hilbert's Third Problem

Document Type

Presentation Abstract

Presentation Date

9-14-2006

Abstract

Your seventh grade teacher may have taught you how to cut a triangle into pieces and glue them together to form a rectangle. She did not teach you the analogous trick in three dimensions -- and with good reason. In 1900, Hilbert conjectured (and Max Dehn proved) that it is impossible to cut a tetrahedron into a finite number of pieces and glue them together to form a rectangular box.

I shall discuss the history of this problem, which extends back to Euclid, and present a modified form of Dehn's proof, accessible to anyone who knows what a group is.

Additional Details

Thursday, 14 September 2006
4:10 p.m. in Math 109

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