Polygon

Area

In this section, the vertices of the polygon under consideration are taken to be ${\displaystyle (x_{0},y_{0}),(x_{1},y_{1}),\ldots ,(x_{n-1},y_{n-1})}$ in order. For convenience in some formulas, the notation (x_n, y_n) = (x₀, y₀) will also be used.

Simple polygons

If the polygon is non-self-intersecting (that is,

${\displaystyle A={\frac {1}{2}}\sum _{i=0}^{n-1}(x_{i}y_{i+1}-x_{i+1}y_{i})\quad {\text{where }}x_{n}=x_{0}{\text{ and }}y_{n}=y_{0},}$

or, using determinants

${\displaystyle 16A^{2}=\sum _{i=0}^{n-1}\sum _{j=0}^{n-1}{\begin{vmatrix}Q_{i,j}&Q_{i,j+1}\\Q_{i+1,j}&Q_{i+1,j+1}\end{vmatrix}},}$

where ${\displaystyle Q_{i,j}}$ is the squared distance between ${\displaystyle (x_{i},y_{i})}$ and ${\displaystyle (x_{j},y_{j}).}$^[4][5]

The signed area depends on the ordering of the vertices and of the orientation of the plane. Commonly, the positive orientation is defined by the (counterclockwise) rotation that maps the positive x-axis to the positive y-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 in absolute value. This is commonly called the shoelace formula or surveyor's formula.^[6]

The area A of a simple polygon can also be computed if the lengths of the sides, a₁, a₂, ..., a_n and the

${\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}A={\frac {1}{2}}(a_{1}[a_{2}\sin(\theta _{1})+a_{3}\sin(\theta _{1}+\theta _{2})+\cdots +a_{n-1}\sin(\theta _{1}+\theta _{2}+\cdots +\theta _{n-2})]\\{}+a_{2}[a_{3}\sin(\theta _{2})+a_{4}\sin(\theta _{2}+\theta _{3})+\cdots +a_{n-1}\sin(\theta _{2}+\cdots +\theta _{n-2})]\\{}+\cdots +a_{n-2}[a_{n-1}\sin(\theta _{n-2})]).\end{aligned}}}$

The formula was described by Lopshits in 1963.^[7]

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.

In every polygon with perimeter p and area A , the isoperimetric inequality ${\displaystyle p^{2}>4\pi A}$ holds.^[8]

For any two simple polygons of equal area, the

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 sides do determine the area.^[10] Of all n-gons with given side lengths, the one with the largest area is cyclic. Of all n-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 of regular polygons.

The area of a regular polygon is given in terms of the radius r of its

${\displaystyle A={\tfrac {1}{2}}\cdot p\cdot r.}$

This radius is also termed its apothem and is often represented as a.

The area of a regular n-gon in terms of the radius R of its circumscribed circle can be expressed trigonometrically as:^[12][13]

${\displaystyle A=R^{2}\cdot {\frac {n}{2}}\cdot \sin {\frac {2\pi }{n}}=R^{2}\cdot n\cdot \sin {\frac {\pi }{n}}\cdot \cos {\frac {\pi }{n}}}$

The area of a regular n-gon inscribed in a unit-radius circle, with side s and interior angle ${\displaystyle \alpha ,}$ can also be expressed trigonometrically as:

${\displaystyle A={\frac {ns^{2}}{4}}\cot {\frac {\pi }{n}}={\frac {ns^{2}}{4}}\cot {\frac {\alpha }{n-2}}=n\cdot \sin {\frac {\alpha }{n-2}}\cdot \cos {\frac {\alpha }{n-2}}.}$

Self-intersecting

The area of a self-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 the density 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

${\displaystyle C_{x}={\frac {1}{6A}}\sum _{i=0}^{n-1}(x_{i}+x_{i+1})(x_{i}y_{i+1}-x_{i+1}y_{i}),}$

${\displaystyle C_{y}={\frac {1}{6A}}\sum _{i=0}^{n-1}(y_{i}+y_{i+1})(x_{i}y_{i+1}-x_{i+1}y_{i}).}$

In these formulas, the signed value of area ${\displaystyle A}$ must be used.

For triangles (n = 3), the centroids of the vertices and of the solid shape are the same, but, in general, this is not true for n > 3. The centroid of the vertex set of a polygon with n vertices has the coordinates

${\displaystyle c_{x}={\frac {1}{n}}\sum _{i=0}^{n-1}x_{i},}$

${\displaystyle c_{y}={\frac {1}{n}}\sum _{i=0}^{n-1}y_{i}.}$

Generalizations

The idea of a polygon has been generalized in various ways. Some of the more important include:

• A
  uniform polyhedra
  .
• A skew polygon does not lie in a flat plane, but zigzags in three (or more) dimensions. The Petrie polygons of the regular polytopes are well known examples.
• An apeirogon is an infinite sequence of sides and angles, which is not closed but has no ends because it extends indefinitely in both directions.
• A
  skew apeirogon
  is an infinite sequence of sides and angles that do not lie in a flat plane.
• A polygon with holes is an area-connected or multiply-connected planar polygon with one external boundary and one or more interior boundaries (holes).
• A complex polygon is a configuration analogous to an ordinary polygon, which exists in the complex plane of two real and two imaginary dimensions.
• An abstract polygon is an algebraic partially ordered set representing the various elements (sides, vertices, etc.) and their connectivity. A real geometric polygon is said to be a realization of the associated abstract polygon. Depending on the mapping, all the generalizations described here can be realized.
• A polyhedron 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 called polytopes.^[15] (In other conventions, the words polyhedron and polytope are used in any dimension, with the distinction between the two that a polytope is necessarily bounded.^[16])

Naming

The word polygon comes from

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 the regular star pentagon is also known as the pentagram.

To construct the name of a polygon with more than 20 and fewer than 100 edges, combine the prefixes as follows.

Polygons have been known since ancient times. The

The first known systematic study of non-convex polygons in general was made by Thomas Bradwardine in the 14th century.^[42]

In 1952, Geoffrey Colin Shephard generalized the idea of polygons to the complex plane, where each real dimension is accompanied by an imaginary one, to create complex polygons.^[43]

In nature

Polygons appear in rock formations, most commonly as the flat facets of crystals, where the angles between the sides depend on the type of mineral from which the crystal is made.

Regular hexagons can occur when the cooling of

In biology, the surface of the wax honeycomb made by bees is an array of hexagons, and the sides and base of each cell are also polygons.

Computer graphics

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In computer graphics, a polygon is a primitive used in modelling and rendering. They are defined in a database, containing arrays of vertices (the coordinates of the geometrical vertices, as well as other attributes of the polygon, such as color, shading and texture), connectivity information, and materials.^[44][45]

Any surface is modelled as a tessellation called polygon mesh. If a square mesh has n + 1 points (vertices) per side, there are n 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. Where n 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 and computational geometry, it is often necessary to determine whether a given point ${\displaystyle P=(x_{0},y_{0})}$ lies inside a simple polygon given by a sequence of line segments. This is called the point in polygon test.^[46]

See also

References

Bibliography

• Coxeter, H.S.M.; Regular Polytopes, Methuen and Co., 1948 (3rd Edition, Dover, 1973).
• 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)

Notes

External links

Look up polygon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Polygons.

• Weisstein, Eric W. "Polygon". MathWorld.
• What Are Polyhedra?, with Greek Numerical Prefixes
• Polygons, types of polygons, and polygon properties, with interactive animation
• How to draw monochrome orthogonal polygons on screens, by Herbert Glarner
• comp.graphics.algorithms Frequently Asked Questions, solutions to mathematical problems computing 2D and 3D polygons
• Comparison of the different algorithms for Polygon Boolean operations, compares capabilities, speed and numerical robustness
• 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

v t e Fundamental convex regular and uniform polytopes in dimensions 2–10
Family	An	Bn	I2(p) / Dn	E6 / E7 / E8 / F4 / G2	Hn
Regular polygon	Triangle	Square	p-gon	Hexagon	Pentagon
Uniform polyhedron	Tetrahedron	Octahedron • Cube	Demicube		Dodecahedron • Icosahedron
Uniform polychoron	Pentachoron	16-cell • Tesseract	Demitesseract	24-cell	120-cell • 600-cell
Uniform 5-polytope	5-simplex	5-orthoplex • 5-cube	5-demicube
Uniform 6-polytope	6-simplex	6-orthoplex • 6-cube	6-demicube	122 • 221
Uniform 7-polytope	7-simplex	7-orthoplex • 7-cube	7-demicube	132 • 231 • 321
Uniform 8-polytope	8-simplex	8-orthoplex • 8-cube	8-demicube	142 • 241 • 421
Uniform 9-polytope	9-simplex	9-orthoplex • 9-cube	9-demicube
Uniform 10-polytope	10-simplex	10-orthoplex • 10-cube	10-demicube
Uniform n-polytope	n-simplex	n-orthoplex • n-cube	n-demicube	1k2 • 2k1 • k21	n-pentagonal polytope
Topics: List of regular polytopes and compounds