Pythagorean Calculator

thingiverse

A quick project I've been tinkering with over the past few days, a basic slide ruler for determining the lengths of right triangle sides. Only about an hour and three-quarters of printer time and roughly fifty cents' worth of hardware are required. I created this on a whim and hope it can assist some teachers teaching the Pythagorean Theorem or even trigonometry. After printing the two components, body1 and body2, all that's needed are two bolts and two nuts. This model was specifically designed to utilize bolts measuring 1/4 inches in diameter, thus necessitating 1/4 inch nuts. One bolt is inserted into the bottom slide, another into the side slide, and then body2 is angled so it forms a right triangle; tighten the bolts with the nuts. The nuts serve to secure the plastic together, preventing the hypotenuse from shifting while taking measurements, but can be loosened for re-adjusting the hypotenuse. Crucially, each side of the triangle features small indents, each one representing a quarter inch, which will facilitate accurate measurements.