There is no doubt that the width of a circle is constant: its diameter.
If a given plane simple closed curve's width is constant in all directions, is it necessarily a circle?
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
The surprising answer is that there are many non-circular shapes of constant width. A nontrivial example is the Reuleaux triangle, a shape formed from the intersection of three circular disks, each having its center on the boundary of the other two.