Some polygons of different kinds: open (excluding its boundary), boundary only (excluding interior), closed (including both boundary and interior), and self-intersecting.
The segments of a closed polygonal chain are called itsedges orsides. The points where two edges meet are the polygon'svertices orcorners. Ann-gon is a polygon withn sides; for example, atriangle is a 3-gon.
Asimple polygon is one which does not intersect itself. More precisely, the only allowed intersections among the line segments that make up the polygon are the shared endpoints of consecutive segments in the polygonal chain. A simple polygon is the boundary of a region of the plane that is called asolid polygon. The interior of a solid polygon is itsbody, also known as apolygonal region orpolygonal area. In contexts where one is concerned only with simple and solid polygons, apolygon may refer only to a simple polygon or to a solid polygon.
A polygon is a 2-dimensional example of the more generalpolytope in any number of dimensions. There are many moregeneralizations of polygons defined for different purposes.
Etymology
The wordpolygon derives from theGreek adjective πολύς (polús) 'much', 'many' and γωνία (gōnía) 'corner' or 'angle'. It has been suggested that γόνυ (gónu) 'knee' may be the origin ofgon.[1]
Classification
Some different types of polygon
Number of sides
Polygons are primarily classified by the number of sides.
Convexity and intersection
Polygons may be characterized by their convexity or type of non-convexity:
Convex: any line drawn through the polygon (and not tangent to an edge or corner) meets its boundary exactly twice. As a consequence, all its interior angles are less than 180°. Equivalently, any line segment with endpoints on the boundary passes through only interior points between its endpoints. This condition is true for polygons in any geometry, not just Euclidean.[2]
Non-convex: a line may be found which meets its boundary more than twice. Equivalently, there exists a line segment between two boundary points that passes outside the polygon.
Simple: the boundary of the polygon does not cross itself. All convex polygons are simple.
Concave: Non-convex and simple. There is at least one interior angle greater than 180°.
Star-shaped: the whole interior is visible from at least one point, without crossing any edge. The polygon must be simple, and may be convex or concave. All convex polygons are star-shaped.
Self-intersecting: the boundary of the polygon crosses itself. The termcomplex is sometimes used in contrast tosimple, but this usage risks confusion with the idea of acomplex polygon as one which exists in the complexHilbert plane consisting of twocomplex dimensions.
Star polygon: a polygon which self-intersects in a regular way. A polygon cannot be both a star and star-shaped.
Isotoxal oredge-transitive: all sides lie within the samesymmetry orbit. The polygon is also equilateral and tangential.
The property of regularity may be defined in other ways: a polygon is regular if and only if it is both isogonal and isotoxal, or equivalently it is both cyclic and equilateral. A non-convex regular polygon is called aregularstar polygon.
Miscellaneous
Rectilinear: the polygon's sides meet at right angles, i.e. all its interior angles are 90 or 270 degrees.
Monotone with respect to a given lineL: every lineorthogonal to L intersects the polygon not more than twice.
Any polygon has as many corners as it has sides. Each corner has several angles. The two most important ones are:
Interior angle – The sum of the interior angles of a simplen-gon is(n − 2) ×πradians or(n − 2) × 180degrees. This is because any simplen-gon ( havingn sides ) can be considered to be made up of(n − 2) triangles, each of which has an angle sum of π radians or 180 degrees. The measure of any interior angle of a convex regularn-gon is radians or degrees. The interior angles of regularstar polygons were first studied by Poinsot, in the same paper in which he describes the fourregular star polyhedra: for a regular-gon (ap-gon with central densityq), each interior angle is radians or degrees.[3]
Exterior angle – The exterior angle is thesupplementary angle to the interior angle. Tracing around a convexn-gon, the angle "turned" at a corner is the exterior or external angle. Tracing all the way around the polygon makes one fullturn, so the sum of the exterior angles must be 360°. This argument can be generalized to concave simple polygons, if external angles that turn in the opposite direction are subtracted from the total turned. Tracing around ann-gon in general, the sum of the exterior angles (the total amount one rotates at the vertices) can be any integer multipled of 360°, e.g. 720° for apentagram and 0° for an angular "eight" orantiparallelogram, whered is thedensity orturning number of the polygon.
Area
Coordinates of a non-convex pentagon
In this section, the vertices of the polygon under consideration are taken to be in order. For convenience in some formulas, the notation(xn,yn) = (x0,y0) will also be used.
The signed area depends on the ordering of the vertices and of theorientation of the plane. Commonly, the positive orientation is defined by the (counterclockwise) rotation that maps the positivex-axis to the positivey-axis. If the vertices are ordered counterclockwise (that is, according to positive orientation), the signed area is positive; otherwise, it is negative. In either case, the area formula is correct inabsolute value. This is commonly called theshoelace formula orsurveyor's formula.[6]
The areaA of a simple polygon can also be computed if the lengths of the sides,a1,a2, ...,an and theexterior angles,θ1,θ2, ...,θn are known, from:
If the polygon can be drawn on an equally spaced grid such that all its vertices are grid points,Pick's theorem gives a simple formula for the polygon's area based on the numbers of interior and boundary grid points: the former number plus one-half the latter number, minus 1.
For any two simple polygons of equal area, theBolyai–Gerwien theorem asserts that the first can be cut into polygonal pieces which can be reassembled to form the second polygon.
The lengths of the sides of a polygon do not in general determine its area.[9] However, if the polygon is simple and cyclic then the sidesdo determine the area.[10] Of alln-gons with given side lengths, the one with the largest area is cyclic. Of alln-gons with a given perimeter, the one with the largest area is regular (and therefore cyclic).[11]
Regular polygons
Many specialized formulas apply to the areas ofregular polygons.
The area of a regular polygon is given in terms of the radiusr of itsinscribed circle and its perimeterp by
This radius is also termed itsapothem and is often represented asa.
The area of a regularn-gon can be expressed in terms of the radiusR of itscircumscribed circle (the unique circle passing through all vertices of the regularn-gon) as follows:[12][13]
Self-intersecting
The area of aself-intersecting polygon can be defined in two different ways, giving different answers:
Using the formulas for simple polygons, we allow that particular regions within the polygon may have their area multiplied by a factor which we call thedensity of the region. For example, the central convex pentagon in the center of a pentagram has density 2. The two triangular regions of a cross-quadrilateral (like a figure 8) have opposite-signed densities, and adding their areas together can give a total area of zero for the whole figure.[14]
Considering the enclosed regions as point sets, we can find the area of the enclosed point set. This corresponds to the area of the plane covered by the polygon or to the area of one or more simple polygons having the same outline as the self-intersecting one. In the case of the cross-quadrilateral, it is treated as two simple triangles.[citation needed]
Centroid
Using the same convention for vertex coordinates as in the previous section, the coordinates of the centroid of a solid simple polygon are
In these formulas, the signed value of area must be used.
Fortriangles (n = 3), the centroids of the vertices and of the solid shape are the same, but, in general, this is not true forn > 3. Thecentroid of the vertex set of a polygon withn vertices has the coordinates
Generalizations
The idea of a polygon has been generalized in various ways. Some of the more important include:
Aspherical polygon is a circuit of arcs of great circles (sides) and vertices on the surface of a sphere. It allows thedigon, a polygon having only two sides and two corners, which is impossible in a flat plane. Spherical polygons play an important role incartography (map making) and inWythoff's construction of theuniform polyhedra.
Askew polygon does not lie in a flat plane, but zigzags in three (or more) dimensions. ThePetrie polygons of the regular polytopes are well known examples.
Anapeirogon is an infinite sequence of sides and angles, which is not closed but has no ends because it extends indefinitely in both directions.
Askew apeirogon is an infinite sequence of sides and angles that do not lie in a flat plane.
Apolygon with holes is an area-connected or multiply-connected planar polygon with one external boundary and one or more interior boundaries (holes).
Anabstract polygon is an algebraicpartially ordered set representing the various elements (sides, vertices, etc.) and their connectivity. A real geometric polygon is said to be arealization of the associated abstract polygon. Depending on the mapping, all the generalizations described here can be realized.
Apolyhedron is a three-dimensional solid bounded by flat polygonal faces, analogous to a polygon in two dimensions. The corresponding shapes in four or higher dimensions are calledpolytopes.[15] (In other conventions, the wordspolyhedron andpolytope are used in any dimension, with the distinction between the two that a polytope is necessarily bounded.[16])
Naming
The wordpolygon comes fromLate Latinpolygōnum (a noun), fromGreek πολύγωνον (polygōnon/polugōnon), noun use of neuter of πολύγωνος (polygōnos/polugōnos, the masculine adjective), meaning "many-angled". Individual polygons are named (and sometimes classified) according to the number of sides, combining aGreek-derivednumerical prefix with the suffix-gon, e.g.pentagon,dodecagon. Thetriangle,quadrilateral andnonagon are exceptions.
Beyond decagons (10-sided) and dodecagons (12-sided), mathematicians generally use numerical notation, for example 17-gon and 257-gon.[17]
Exceptions exist for side counts that are easily expressed in verbal form (e.g. 20 and 30), or are used by non-mathematicians. Some special polygons also have their own names; for example theregularstarpentagon is also known as thepentagram.
The simplest polygon which can cross itself; the simplest polygon which can be concave; the simplest polygon which can be non-cyclic. Cantile the plane.
[21] The simplest polygon such that the regular form cannot be constructed with compass, straightedge, andangle trisector. However, it can be constructed with neusis.[22]
As with René Descartes's example of the chiliagon, the million-sided polygon has been used as an illustration of a well-defined concept that cannot be visualised.[32][33][34][35][36][37][38] The megagon is also used as an illustration of the convergence ofregular polygons to a circle.[39]
To construct the name of a polygon with more than 20 and fewer than 100 edges, combine the prefixes as follows.[21] The "kai" term applies to 13-gons and higher and was used byKepler, and advocated byJohn H. Conway for clarity of concatenated prefix numbers in the naming ofquasiregular polyhedra,[25] though not all sources use it.
Polygons appear in rock formations, most commonly as the flat facets ofcrystals, where the angles between the sides depend on the type of mineral from which the crystal is made.
Incomputer graphics, a polygon is aprimitive used in modelling and rendering. They are defined in a database, containing arrays ofvertices (the coordinates of thegeometrical vertices, as well as other attributes of the polygon, such as color, shading and texture), connectivity information, andmaterials.[44][45]
Any surface is modelled as a tessellation calledpolygon mesh. If a square mesh hasn + 1 points (vertices) per side, there aren squared squares in the mesh, or 2n squared triangles since there are two triangles in a square. There are(n + 1)2 / 2(n2) vertices per triangle. Wheren is large, this approaches one half. Or, each vertex inside the square mesh connects four edges (lines).
The imaging system calls up the structure of polygons needed for the scene to be created from the database. This is transferred to active memory and finally, to the display system (screen, TV monitors etc.) so that the scene can be viewed. During this process, the imaging system renders polygons in correct perspective ready for transmission of the processed data to the display system. Although polygons are two-dimensional, through the system computer they are placed in a visual scene in the correct three-dimensional orientation.
In computer graphics andcomputational geometry, it is often necessary to determine whether a given point lies inside a simple polygon given by a sequence of line segments. This is called thepoint in polygon test.[46]
Cromwell, P.;Polyhedra, CUP hbk (1997), pbk. (1999).
Grünbaum, B.; Are your polyhedra the same as my polyhedra?Discrete and comput. geom: the Goodman-Pollack festschrift, ed. Aronov et al. Springer (2003) pp. 461–488. (pdf)
^Chakerian, G. D. "A Distorted View of Geometry." Ch. 7 inMathematical Plums (R. Honsberger, editor). Washington, DC: Mathematical Association of America, 1979: 147.
^Grunbaum, B.; "Are your polyhedra the same as my polyhedra",Discrete and computational geometry: the Goodman-Pollack Festschrift, Ed. Aronov et al., Springer (2003), p. 464.
^abArthur Baragar (2002) Constructions Using a Compass and Twice-Notched Straightedge, The American Mathematical Monthly, 109:2, 151–164,doi:10.1080/00029890.2002.11919848
^Schirra, Stefan (2008). "How Reliable Are Practical Point-in-Polygon Strategies?". In Halperin, Dan; Mehlhorn, Kurt (eds.).Algorithms - ESA 2008: 16th Annual European Symposium, Karlsruhe, Germany, September 15-17, 2008, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 5193. Springer. pp. 744–755.doi:10.1007/978-3-540-87744-8_62.ISBN978-3-540-87743-1.
External links
Look uppolygon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Interior angle sum of polygons: a general formula, Provides an interactive Java investigation that extends the interior angle sum formula for simple closed polygons to include crossed (complex) polygons