The Heptadecagon reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004
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Heptadecagon

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In geometry, a heptadecagon is a seventeen-sided polygon. The regular heptadecagon is a constructible polygon, as was shown by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1796.

Constructibility implies that trigonometric functions of 2π/17 can be expressed with basic arithmetic and square roots alone. Gauss' book Disquisitiones contains the following equation, given here in modern notation:

See also

External links

You can see how to construct a regular 17-gon geometrically at either of

http://www.showmath.co.kr/const/polygon/rpoly17.html (Korean)
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/2977/gauss/formulae/heptadecagon.html

And you can see the algebraic aspect (by Gauss) in this book :

'Famous Problems and Other Monographs' by F.Klein et al.

http://www.mathlove.org/bbs/data/mathfb/alg17gon.ppt