What are the latest research developments on Heron's Formula?

[PrudensOptimus]

Research on Heron's Formula??/

Today I saw a guy entitling his Research paper with "Heron's Formula." I asked him ... what can you do with a equation that has been tested for hundreds of years... he said nothing.

I wonder what can you research about that. And any good Math researches? And can you even research pre-existing stuff?

 

[HallsofIvy]

One, what "level" research was this? (High school or college term paper, graduate work, published research?)

Two, what was the point of the paper? (New application, history, etc.)

Certainly, if you have something new to say about anything that other want to hear, you can write it. Of course, the editors and referees of the journal where it is published (or teacher or professor to whom the paper is submitted) will decide whether it really is new and if anyone really wants to hear it!

If you are talking about "research" that is "published" on a web-site, well, that could be anything.

 

[PrudensOptimus]

It's for a sophmore Science Fair thing... He said he will proove the Heron's Formula in the research paper... I saw the proof many times, starting from 0.5Sin[A] * a, and replacing Sin[A] with sqrt(1 - Cos 2A/2)... and then a lot of factoring and math comes to the well known form of sqrt(s(s-a)(s-b)(s-c)), s = a+b+c/2

But is it even ... legal to proove a law tested billions of times? That's ... bs lol.

 

[HallsofIvy]

As far as I know there are no laws about proofs!

Yes, it is perfectly "legal" to prove something that has been proven before- teachers do it all the time. It is even legal to exactly copy someone else's proof as long as:
1) You give credit to the person or
2) It was done long enough ago that it is in the public domain.

As to how much credit the judges of the science fair will give it, I'll leave that up to the judges.

 

[PrudensOptimus]

Out of curiousity,... what would the intro, abstract, experiment, ... would be when you are doing a proof? ... for the most the proof is 20 lines... how would you make that long enough to fit 8 pages?(min req. for page is 8 pages long).

I am doing a comparison of Derivatives to Averages, which one would be more sensible in numbers., And ... because my teacher who would be reviewing it is a chemistry teacher,... knows nothing about fancy math, not even simple math..., I really don't want to irritate her with math... So I used ... 300 words just to describe the limit defination of derivative... that's soo bs... anyways, how would you do math "discussing" papers (not really research to me, because is not really a breakthrough., just talking about which one might be more sensible)