Innovative Pythagorean Theorem Proof by High School Students in New Orleans ✨

If you'd like more details on how Calcea Johnson's and Ne’Kiya Jackson's proof works, you can check out this video: https://youtu.be/p6j2nZKwf20.

Jackson's and Johnson's accomplishment isn't just cool 'cause they're in high school. It's also relatively difficult to come up with trigonometric proofs of the Pythagorean theorem, as theirs (mostly) is.

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The reason for that difficulty is that a lot of trigonometric identities and theorems are based on what's called the Pythagorean identity: sin²x + cos²x = 1. As you might imagine from the name, the Pythagorean identity comes from the Pythagorean theorem, making any proof that relies on it circular. Johnson and Jackson cleverly avoid this by using the Law of Sines instead, along with a clever shape they call the "waffle cone". If you'd like to play with the waffle cone, I've made this Desmos graph: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/tyw7ktgjpq.

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