Kites And Triangles

Date: 11/02/98 at 15:57:39
From: Omar Jackson
Subject: Kites

What are kites, and how are they related to triangles?

Date: 11/02/98 at 17:56:51
From: Doctor Pat
Subject: Re: Kites

Omar,

A kite is a quadrilateral with two pairs of adjacent sides congruent. 
Think of a picture of a kite - something like this: 
                .
               /|\
              / | \
             /  |  \
            /   |   \
           /____|____\
           \    |    /
            \   |   /
             \  |  /
              \ | /
               \|/
                '

A kite can be formed by putting two isosceles triangles with the same 
base together. Many properties of the kite make it special. For 
example, it always has perpendicular diagonals, so its area is 1/2 the 
product of the diagonals and it can always be broken into four right 
triangles.  

- Doctor Pat, The Math Forum
  http://mathforum.org/dr.math/