It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Then get 3 sticks -- thin ones, just strong enough to stick into soft soil. Stab one stick in the ground and arrange a knot at the stick, stretch three divisions away from it in any direction and insert the second stick in the ground, then place the third stick so that it falls on the knot between the 4-part and the 5-part division. This forces the creation of a 3 : 4 : 5 right triangle. The angle between the 3 units and the 4 units is of necessity a square or right angle.
The ancient Egyptians used the string trick to create right angles when re-measuring their fields after the annual Nile floods washed out boundary markers
Mnesarchus[pyhtagoras' father] was said to not to have been Greek, but a Phoenician, originally from the city of Tyre.
Originally posted by Amorymeltzer
One of the main reasons they would like it is because if you take a string divided into parts 3, 4, and 5 units long (a pythagorean triplet) you can create a perfect right angle.
Useful when you wanna build things.
Originally posted by Ambient Sound
Yep.
a² + b² = c²
It's how you make something "square".