Skip to main content
16-Pearl
July 1, 2022

Mathcad Community Challenge July 2022 - Area of a Spherical Triangle

  • July 1, 2022
  • 11 replies
  • 21473 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

DJNewman
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!

PTC Marketer for Creo and Mathcad. I run their YouTube channels, some Creo campaigns, and all Mathcad campaigns and communications.