Let the length of the longest diagonal of a regular unit heptagon be and the length of the shortest diagonal be . Find the value of rounded to the nearest integer.
You may use a calculator that can perform standard trig functions ( , , and ).
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Let the heptagon be A B C D E F G . Draw A C and G D . Now use Ptolemy's theorem on A C D G to obtain a b + 1 = b 2 → b = 2 a 2 + 4 + a Use Law of Cosines on Δ A B C to obtain a 2 = 2 − 2 cos ( 7 9 0 0 ) . This can be calculated to approx. 1 . 8 0 1 9 4 . Now we plug this into our original equation to get b ≈ 2 . 2 4 6 9 8 . Thus a − b ≈ 0 . 4 4 5 0 4 and 1 0 0 ( a − b ) ≈ 4 4 . 5 0 4 rounds to 4 5 .