According to legend, Queen Dido fled to Africa
after
her husband was killed. There, she begged a king
for
land. He granted her only as much as she could
enclose with an oxhide. Queeen Dido sliced the
oxhide into strips, then used the strips to surround
a
large area. According to the story, this land
became
the city of Carthage.
Suppose you have a 24-foot-long strip of
hide. If
you made an equilateral triangle out of the strip,
how
much area would it enclose?
What area would you get if you made a square?
A regular hexagon? If you were Queen Dido, which
of these shapes would you choose for your city
and
why?
