Prismoids

. July 20, 2013

Abstract This is the papers abstract . . .

1 2

Introduction Proof 1

(here goes pictures) Now, our quadrilateral reduces down to two right triangles of hypotenuse r. Converting these into a system of equations gives b cos 1 = a cos 2 and 1 +2 = . To solve this system, we substitute variables: x = cos 1 , 1 = cos-1 x y = cos 2 , 2 = cos-1 y c = a/b. Plugging into our system and condensing into one equation gives cos-1 x + cos-1 y = cos-1 cy + cos-1 y = . Solving this equation gives y= sin2 . c2 2c cos + 1 1 (1)

Since r =

b y

and c =

a b

cos , cos

our equation transforms into

cos r= Which nally becomes

( cos )2 2 cos cos + 1 cos cos sin

(2)

cos2 2coscos cos + cos2 . (3) sin 2 r 2 , we have our relation for the height of a So, now, because h = prismatoid: r= h= 1 cos2 2coscos cos + cos2 . sin2 (4)

ORourke

(another picture showing that ORourkes statement reduces to smallest dihedral) Therefore, the total travel distance is just (1 + cos). However, because cos) is just hsin( ) = hsin, the travel distance reduces to h (1+ . As sin (1+cos) the height is constant for every side on a prismoid and because sin is monotone decreasing between 0 and , the travel distance is maximized when is as small as possible; ORourkes statement reduces down to placing the top on the side with the smallest dihedral angle will always form a valid unfolding. In this paper, we will prove that ORourkes statement is correct; every prismoid can be unfolded in a volcano unfolding with the top placed on the side with the smallest dihedral angle. For brevity, we will hereon call the side with the smallest dihedral angle A and the measure of this angle . First, we notice that if the supporting line of the outward edge of side A does not cross any part of the rest of the unfolding, the fact that the unfolding is valid follows. Therefore, our approach will be to show that the supporting line of A will not cross the rest of the unfolding.

Proof 2

First, we notice that at the corners between A and the prismoids base, the prismoid is locally a tetrahedron. We will now prove the rst lemma: lemma 1: small dihedral - large corner angle. [use citation] Therefore, because the relevant dihedrals remain the same after cutting the prismoid down to a tetrahedron and that the dihedral of the side adjacent to A is necessarily greater than As, we have that the corner angle of A at that point is larger than that of As adjacent side. So, because of this fact, we can also show that As corner angle is larger than /2. So, it necessarily follows that the adjacent sides are below the supporting line. Now, we will need to consider the nonadjacent sides. To evaluate this problem, we will start by dening the side we want to show is below the supporting line as B. Now, we will take the solid prismoid and cut through it along the plane that is perpendicular to the bases of the prismoid and goes through the points C and D marked above. The resulting gure that contains A and B is also a prismoid, and because A and B are the same with respect to their location in space and dihedrals, our problem remains the same. Therefore, showing our conjecture works for sides separated by one edge will show that our conjecture works for sides separated by any number of edges, which is to say our conjecture is true. To analyze the problem using our cut prismoid, we will need to calculate some variables. First, we have the trapezoidal height, H, of side A as sin, where is the edge length of A and is the interior corner angle of A. Similarly, we have the veritcal rise of B, V, as sin, where is the edge length of B and is the angle of rotation given by ( i ); the sum being over all the exterior angles of the base from As corner to Bs. As we are dealing with a simplied case in which there are only two angles, 1 and 2 (marked above), between A and B, simplies to 2 + 1 + 2 . We will also need the vertical travel distance, T, that side B declines by with respect to A. Dening the edge between A and B as S and the angle between A and S as 1 , we get that T is equal to Ssin1 . Given these values for a prismoid unfolding, it is easy to see that the supporting line will not be crossed i H V T . pictures are needed throughout

Therefore, plugging in our values for H, V, and T, we get sin sin( 2 + 1 + 2 ) Ssin1 (5)

Now, we will need a value for S. To do this, we will need to analyze the trapezoid between A and B, which we will call N. We will now dene the corner angle of N at point C as and the corner angle at D as . In addition, because N is adjacent to both A and B, we also know the measure of two of its edges: the edge bordering A is of length , and the edge bordering B has length . This gives us the following information about N. [picture here] However, this is not sucient information to obtain a value for S. This is because N is essentially two triangles plus a rectangle in the middle, and there is not enough information to uniquely determine the rectangles base. This means that S could be as large as we wanted without changing any of its angles or lengths. The best we can do is obtain a lower bound for S by calculating the length of the base of both of the smaller triangles that border the rectangle. The base length of the triangle of the left is equal to cos , while the base of the one on the right is equal to cos . This gives a lower bound for S of cos + cos . Luckily, replacing S with its lower bound simply represents the worst case scenario; it must work for the conjecture to be true and its correctness implies that the entire conjecture is true as well. Our condition for a lack of intersection is now sin sin( + 1 + 2 ) ( cos + cos )sin1 . (6)

Taking another look at N reveals that because its height is a constant, it should not matter if we measure it using and or with and . This means that we have sin = sin (7) sin sin Plugging into (6) and simplifying gives = sin( + 1 + 2 ) sin1 cos sin + sin1 cos 0 sin sin or (8)

(9)

One possible approach from here is to use that , , , , and2 are independent from 1 to take the derivative of the above inequality with respect 4

to 1 , then setting equal to 0 to nd the minimum value of the above. Then, we can show that the minimum value is always greater than 0. Doing the above gives f (1min ) = with a = sin (cot + cot ) b = + 2 and sinsin . sin Ill do more work on the problem later today. c= (11) (12) (13) c 1 + a2 2acosb, if cosb > a c sin(b), if cosb a (10)