The Bear and the Triangle

A bear, walking through the dark woods, looked for a picnic. A flash of yellow, escaping through the tree trunks stopped the bear on its track. Its fur shivered.

What can it be that is so bright and Yellow in all this penumbra, the bear thought.

The bear searched towards and discovered a Yellow Triangle, an Equilateral triangle, a regular polygon with three sides, all three sides equal in length, all three angles congruent and equal and internal angles, at sixty degrees each, adding up to one hundred and eighty in total. The perpendicular drawn from the vertex of the equilateral triangle to the opposite side bisects it into two equal halves.

I shall eat it, said the bear and so he did. It tasted of honey. I wonder if there are any other examples of tasty regular polygons scattered in these woods, I shall explore further.

A little further on, the bear found a Blue Trapezium. I shall not eat it, I do not trust Blue coloured food, Purple, fine, but Blue, no, said the bear. Also, regular polygons are more suitable than irregular polygons for bears. I shall search further as my hunger is without end.

Soon the bear came across a Red Rectangle which tasted of tomato sauce. The Rectangle, a closed 2-D shape, having 4 sides, 4 corners, and 4 right angles (90°). The opposite sides of the rectangle, equal and parallel. Since, a rectangle is a 2-D shape, it is characterized by two dimensions, length, and width.

This shape is also not a regular polygon but I am partial to tomato flavour so I shall devour it.

I wonder where these shapes are coming from, thought the bear. Have I stumbled into a modernist painting? I am as interested in regular polygons as the next bear, but I have yet to find my favourite, a strawberry flavour Octagon, so I shall continue to search.

Eventually the trees ran thinner in number and eventual ran dry. The shapes took over, the bear wandered in a landscape of bright coloured sides and angles.

This is an exquisite land, said the bear, I shall eat as many as possible before I hibernate.

Soon the bear was replete and as the winter was nearby in the next room, the bear decided to crawl under a pile of Purple Heptagons and fell fast.

In the dark of winter, when the snows flowed about in low hills, lumping over the bear’s den and turning a draughty shack into a cosy duvet situation. The bears breathing went shallow and relaxed.

In spring when the bear rose blinking in the dripping furniture, he consulted a passing bumblebee as to the state of the onion. The bumble bee consulted an opportune flow chart and concluded that in the spring the most nutritious shapes would be Yellow Squares closely followed by Blue Circles for dessert.

No, said the Whitecoat, this will not do. I cannot understand any part of this story and my children cannot sleep.