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Painting - Transversals (Ceva)

National Museum of American History

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Object Details

referenced
Ceva, Giovanni
painter
Johnson, Crockett
Description
A transversal is a line that intersects a system of other lines or line segments. Here Crockett Johnson explores the properties of certain transversals of the sides of a triangle. The Italian mathematician Giovanni Ceva showed in 1678 that lines drawn from a point to the vertices of a triangle divide the edges of the triangle into six segments such that the product of the length of three nonconsecutive segments equals the product of the remaining three segments.
This painting shows a triangle (in white), lines drawn from a point inside the triangle to the three vertices, and a line drawn from a point outside the triangle (toward the bottom of the painting) to the three vertices. Segments of the sides of the triangle to be multiplied together are of like color. Crockett Johnson's painting combines two diagrams on page 159 of Nathan Court's College Geometry (1964 printing). These diagrams are annotated in his copy of the volume. Several of the triangles adjacent to the central triangle were used by Court in his proof of Ceva's theorem.
The painting is #31 in the series. It is signed: CJ66. There is a wooden frame painted off-white.
Location
Currently not on view
Credit Line
Ruth Krauss in memory of Crockett Johnson
1966
ID Number
1979.1093.22
catalog number
1979.1093.22
accession number
1979.1093
Object Name
painting
Physical Description
masonite (substrate material)
wood (frame material)
Measurements
overall: 51 cm x 63.5 cm x 3.7 cm; 20 1/16 in x 25 in x 1 7/16 in
See more items in
Medicine and Science: Mathematics
Science & Mathematics
Crockett Johnson
Art
National Museum of American History
Record ID
nmah_694646
Metadata Usage (text)
CC0
GUID (Link to Original Record)
http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746b3-143e-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa

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Transversals (Ceva)
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