Tower

Tyler Knight and Connor Zagumny

GAT
9A Mr. Acre
31 May 2015
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Dear multimillionaire,
While I do think that it is a little bit odd that nobody knows your name, I would
absolutely love to design your tower for you. Now, I love geometry and all, but why an
Icosagon? Doesnt 20 sides seem a bit excessive? You must be a really good interior and
exterior decorator with a surface area that large! Of course, like any good contractor, I checked
my math and found hopefully all of the errors. Because of this, the original blueprints were
scrapped. An error deleted all of the remaining blueprints, so the all figures found below were
made from scratch a second time.

Part 2:
So, the first thing needed is to find the central angle of the icosagon so I can find the
triangles needed. So, the formula for the central angle, 360/n where n is the number of sides,
the n would be substituted with 20. So, 360/20 is 18.

Figure 1. Icosagon Central Angle

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Figure 1, above, shows the central angle measure of the icosagon. Since the 4 polygons,
not including the plot itself, are all similar to one another. This means that they all have the same
central angle measure, 18.

Figure 2. Triangle Angle Measure

Figure 2, above, shows the angle measure for the triangle. Since the polygons are all
similar, the angle measures are the same for all of them. The angle of 9 will be used to find the

area of each triangle and eventually the area of the whole polygons.
Figure 3. Base of Triangle
Figure 3, above, shows the formula used to find the base of the triangle. While to find the
actual missing side length of a triangle, the tangent of the angle=opposite side over adjacent side,
I have set the equation set up so that the opposite side will always be the missing side, or the
base, and the adjacent side to be the height.
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Figure 4. Triangle Areas

Figure 4, above, shows the areas for the triangles for the 4 different polygons.

Figure 5. Area and Side Lengths

Figure 5, above, shows the side lengths and areas for all the polygons used. To find the
area, 20*area of triangle was the formula.
The local building laws prohibit buildings from being built within 3 feet of the plot boundary on
any side, so the original 25 by 25 plot size is now being reduced to only 19 by 19. To find the
area of the base of the tower, all that is needed is the area of one of the 20 triangles that can be
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created inside of the icosagon. So, using n* *b*h, 20* *b*h is the formula used. Using the
side lengths given in figure 3, the area of the triangles can be found by multiplying of the base
times the height, which can be found in figure 4. So, the area of the 4 polygons are shown above
in figure 5.
Poly 1:2*9.5tan(9)
Poly 2: 2*8.5tan(9)
Poly 3: 2*7.5tan(9)
Poly 4: 2*6.5tan(9)
Figure 6. Side Length Equations
Figure 6, above, shows another way of looking at the side length equations.
Part 3:
So, for the inside of your tower you stated that you wanted to be able to look down and
see the fish swimming below your feet. While that is a great idea, it will also be a very costly
one. You cant just use regular glass, if you ever dropped anything you would break it and fall
in. So I am going to strongly recommend that you use plexiglass. The brand that I use is
Nevabreak-Supaclear-Antiscratch Plexiglass, a family owned business. While it does cost $1100
per 4 ft by 8 ft by 4 inch sheet, it is the strongest plexiglass I have found. It also doesnt scratch
very easily, meaning it will always be super clear. Also, we need the best of concrete to support
this amazing tower, we dont want it settling and the walls cracking. So, I am going to go with
your suggestion of a 3 and a half foot footing below the tower, from polygon 1 just outside the
outer wall to the edge of polygon 4, where the aquarium will be. Concrete takes a long time to
dry, so the brand I use, KwikDriAntiWater-Waterproof Cement, costs $115 per cubic yard. It
has to be very resistant to water since it will be up against the aquarium the whole time. First
thing though, is to find the volume of the footing.
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Figure 7. Footing and Floor

Figure 7, above, shows the volume of the footing found below the tower and the floor.
All of the formulas and substitutions are shown as well as the final volume of the footing, 532.17
ft^3, floor, 44.61 ft^3, and water, 351.32 ft^3. That is around 2,627.85 gallons of water. Thats
quite a bit of water. Fish not included, although I recommend Estapas Fishery, he maintains the
pH levels of the water very well.

Figure 8. Cost
Figure 8, shows the very high price that is to be paid for extreme luxury. The plexiglass
will cost $5500. Even though you only need a little more than 4 sheets, I have to buy the sheets
by the whole, so 5 are needed. For the volume of the footing, since I did the original calculations
in cubic feet, I had to convert them into cubic yards by dividing by 27, or 3 ft cubed. The total
cost of the footing was $2300. Again, I had to round up because I can not buy .7 bags of cement.
So, for the grand total, the cost of this part of the tower is $7800.
Part 4:
Okay, so my first question for you on this part is how short are you?! A five foot door is
really short, how could you fit in without hitting your head? Also, your original requirements for
the door were impossible to do, as the door frame would have been larger than the side of the
tower and it would have been just a bit taller than that part of the tower as well, so I had to scale
it down just a bit. If this is a problem, please contact my manager, Connor Zagumny. It is all his
fault. The only other thing we could have done is put it diagonally, but that would have messed
up other things so we just scaled it down.
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Figure 9. Polygon 2
Figure 9, above, shows the polygon that will be used to find the surface area of the
outside of the tower.

Figure 10. Lateral Surface Area, Door, Window

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Figure 10, above, shows the lateral surface area formulas and substitutions for the tower.
Polygon 2 was used because that was what we were instructed to use. The height was 2 times
the side length, just as you asked. A smaller version of the base of your tower was used as the
window and half of one was used at the top of the door, again just as you requested. Since the
door was 2 ft by 4 ft, the radius of the icosagon was 1. This was used again to find the area of
the 2 polygons, using the same formula as the ones in figure 3, which was height*tan(9)*2 to
find the side length. The area was found to be about 3.17 ft^2 for the window and about 9.58
ft^2 for the door. These 2 numbers would be subtracted from the lateral surface area, or n*b*h,
20*2.69*5.39. Just multiply the area of the window by the number of windows you want. It
didnt specify how many you wanted, so I just calculated the area of only 2 windows. Who
wants only 2 windows? You have the money, you could have 100 windows if you felt like it.
That would be a lot of windows to clean, but I am sure you can afford a cleaning lady.

Part 5:
For this part, we find the volume inside of the tower. We used polygon 3 since the wall is
1 foot thick, it takes up the space that polygon 2 has that polygon 3 does not. So, we used the
side length of polygon 3 and multiplied it by 2 to get the height, and multiplied the area of
polygon 3 by the height and subtracted polygon 4 from it. As a bonus, I also found the internal
decorating area for free! I know you didnt ask for it, but you are getting it anyways.

Figure 11. Polygon 3

Figure 11, above, shows the polygon that is going to be used for this part of the tower.
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Figure 12. Interior Volume
Figure 12, above, shows the volume of the inside of the tower to be 959.53 ft^3.

Figure 13. One Panel

Figure 13, above, shows a single panel that is used to find the volume of the tower.
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Part 6:
For the roof, I had the height to be 3 times the length of the sides of polygon 2.

Figure 14. Slant Height/Angle Measures

Figure 14, above, shows a diagram of the angle measures and the slant height. I used the
pythagorean theorem, A squared plus B squared equals C squared. To find the angle measures,
the inverse of tangent was used. The formula was tan^-1(opposite side/adjacent side), and the
angle between the slant height and the bottom is about 44.

Part 7:
So for this part you basically wanted the surface area of the pyramid that will be the roof
of your tower. So, I found all the angle measurements and length of the needed sides in order to
find the area of a single triangle, and like in the previous surface area figure, I multiplied by 20,
the number of sides, to find the surface area.
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Figure 15. Surface Area of Pyramid

Figure 15, above, shows the formulas and substitutions needed to find the angles, side
lengths, and area of the triangles that make up the sides of the pyramid. It also shows that the
surface area of the pyramid is about 315.73 ft^2.

Part 8:
The main goal of this part is to find the volume of the inside of the pyramid. For this
part, we used the inner pyramid, the part you see when you look up. Since the volume of a
pyramid is *area of base*height of pyramid, and the area of polygon 3 has already been found,
all that is needed is the height. The height will be 3 times the length of the side of polygon 3, or
about 7.13 ft. The volume of the pyramid is 432.32 ft^2.
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Figure 16. Volume of Pyramid

Figure 16, above, shows the volume of the pyramid using the inner portion of it, polygon
3.
Part 9:
The tower is finished, all that remains is to find the total volume and the total surface
area. Since we know the volumes and surface areas from the previous parts, it will be very
simple to just add them together.
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Figure 17. Total Surface Area and Volume

Figure 17, above, shows the outermost frame of the tower. It also shows the raised floor
and the footing.

Part 10:
This tower was an absolute joy to create. It was a lot of fun trying to find all of the angle
measurements and fixing my many mistakes. I made a number of stupid mistakes that were
fixed when I looked over my math a final time. I also had my manager check it over and a
friend, and they said it looked good. So, other than that, I only encountered a few problems.
One of the most major problems was the fact that the door you wanted would have been larger
than the actual size of the wall. I made the door a bit smaller so it would fit on the wall, but if
that is a problem please let me know and I will redesign it. Overall, the project went well, not
too many major problems. Also, we heard that you enjoyed kids. Might this be a play tower for
children? If this is so, we have a great idea for the design of the tower, you can see it in the
model. If you do not like our idea, just tell us and we can tell the actual builders to make a
different design. Its been a pleasure doing business with you, unknown millionaire, and the bill
for the design and manual labor of making the model is in the mail! Thank you very much, and
have fun with your tower!

Sincerely,