A Math Forum Project

Geometry Forum Problem of the 
Week

    The Rectangles of a Tennis Court - Oct. 24-28, 1994

    Boutros and Bernice are starting to study rectangles in school. They had to come up with a problem to share with another group in their class. They both like to play sports, so they came up with the following question:
    You want to lay out a tennis court. It's basically a rectangle. You know the dimensions but you forgot your surveyor's transit which you would use to determine the right angles at the corners. All you have is a ruled tape to measure distances and a lot of string. How do you lay out the rectangle?

    Extra: When else might you use the answers to this problem? What other sorts of applications does this have?

    [Thanks to Michael Thwaites for the basis of this problem.]

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2 July 1995