The Pythagorean Theorem - Educational Outreach

Figure 2.16 shows Kurrah’s creation of the Bride’sChair. The process is rather simple, but shows Kurrah’sintimate familiarity with our fundamental Pythagoreangeometric structure on the left. Four pieces comprise thebasic structure and these are pulled apart and rearrangedas depicted. The key rearrangement is the one on the topright that reassembles the two smaller squares into a newconfiguration known as the bride’s chair. Where the name‘Bride’s Chair’ originated is a matter for speculation;personally, I think the chair-like structure looks more like aLazy Boy.Now what? Kurrah had a packing problem—twolittle squares to be packed into one big square—which hecleverly solved by the following dissection and subsequenttransformation. Figure 2.17 pictorially captures Kurrah’sdilemma, and his key dissection that allowed thetransformation to proceed.?The Bride’s Chair!Figure 2.17: Packing the Bride’s Chair intoThe Big SquareWhat Kurrah did was to replicate the shaded triangle anduse it to frame two cutouts on the Bride’s Chair as shown.Figure 2.18 is ‘Operation Transformation’ showingKurrah’s rotational sequence that leads to a successfulpacking of the large square.50