23.9.09

Where Literature Ties in With Hypotenuses

Homeschooling is filled with wonders, many of which it is too easy to forget, so I am going write one before the afore-mentioned event occurs.

A few days ago, I was watching my math lesson about right triangles, the Pythagorean Theorem, etc. A right triangle is made up of two "legs" and one "hypotenuse."

A few weeks ago, I was reading the O. Henry story "Schools and Schools" (I'll have to write about O. Henry very soon--those are some stories that are not to be passed up). The story was about three cousins: Gilbert, Nevada and Barbara. Gilbert and Barbara were raised together, and they have a sort of a tacit agreement that someday they will marry. When Nevada enters the scene, however, that arrangement is upset. To cut a long story short, O. Henry called the trio a "triangle" and Barbara was relegated to the position of "the hypotenuse." I had no idea what that meant until I learned about the Pythagorean theorem. I love it when my educations dove-tails like that.

2 comments:

Marian said...

That's cool! It happens to me sometimes, too...since I've been studying chemistry, I've come to understand many of the chemistry terms Doyle uses in the Holmes series; and the green-to-purple (or something like that) colours of the chemical reaction in Jekyll & Hyde made some sense. :)

Lucie Manette said...

I know, I was soooo excited to know what haemoglobin (or something like that) was. A Study in Scarlet, you know. ;)