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16-Pearl
July 1, 2022

Mathcad Community Challenge July 2022 - Area of a Spherical Triangle

  • July 1, 2022
  • 11 replies
  • 21460 views

This month's challenge is another geometry-based challenge - but it's non-Euclidean geometry. Given the following three points on a circle of radius 10 units, calculate the area of the spherical triangle:

(5.339, 6.948, 4.819)

(-4.018, -3.703, 8.375)

(6.455, -6.679, -3.705)

(Note that the point coordinates are rounded to three decimal places.)

 

Optional:

  • Can you write a program or function that calculates the area for any three points on the surface?
  • Is there a symbolic evaluation for three generic points (a,b,c), (d,e,f), and (g,h,k)?

 

Here is a 3D model in Creo 9 of the sphere and points:

image

 

Find the Mathcad Community Challenge Guidelines here!

 

Edit: the coordinates of the second point were incorrect. Wildly incorrect. I have no idea how I wrote down the wrong numbers.

11 replies

18-Opal
August 8, 2022

We published Dave's solution blog article! And distributed badges. Thanks to everyone who participated!

https://www.mathcad.com/en/blogs/community-challenge-spherical-triangle

(Dave gave a hint that in September we'll have something from the electrical engineering domain.)

 

Quick reminder that we'd really like to see people's worksheets and not just screenshots of worksheets!