US students have discovered a new method to prove the famous Pythagoras Theorem. Here is everything you need to know.

Eminent mathematicians of the world are in awe of the US teenage students who have claimed that they have successfully discovered a novel method to prove the famous Pythagoras’ theorem by means of trigonometry.

Seniors at St. Mary’s Academy in New Orleans, Calcea Johnson and Ne Kiya Jackson put light on their recent findings recently at the American Mathematical Society’s (AMS) Spring Southeastern Sectional Meeting on March 18.

“Their groundbreaking lecture from the research is historic. High School students are generally not presenters at the American Mathematical Society Meeting,'' said the school announcement.

The Pythagoras Theorem

The famous Pythagoras theorem is an age-old theorem that says that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is actually the same as the sum of the squares of the other two sides of the triangle. The theory is worldwide expressed as a2+ b2 = c2. While the theory is popular and accepted worldwide, there is still no definitive proof for the reason why this 2,000-year-old theory holds true.

What did the students say?

The students pointed out the fact that ever since trigonometry was discovered, it is always believed that all alleged proof of the famous Pythagoras’s Theorem in line with trigonometry must be circular. Additionally, they also stated that even in the book  The Pythagorean Proposition, the largest collection of proofs, the author, Elisha Loomis says that there are actually no trigonometric proofs as all the fundamental formulae of trigonometry are actually based on the Pythagorean Theorem.

However, the students, with utmost confidence, stated that they can successfully prove Pythagoras’ Theorem with the help of trigonometry sans any circular reasoning.

The abstract of the study read that "We present a new proof of Pythagoras's Theorem which is based on a fundamental result in trigonometry — the Law of Sines — and we show that the proof is independent of the Pythagorean trig identity sin2x+cos2x=1."

While putting forward a novel method to prove an age-old theory in itself is commendable, the proof is yet to be accepted and held up.