Geometry

Joining a points on a circle

Statement of the problem
● Investigate how many chords can be drawn in the given points.
● Investigate the relationship between the number of points (n) on the circle
and the maximum number of chord (c) that can be drawn on the circle.
Chord is a line segment that joins any 2 points on a circle

Gather and record Data

1 point= 0 chord 3 points= 3 chords

2 points= 1 chord 4 points= 6 chords

Conjectures
Based on the gathered data, when we increase the number of points, the chords that we can draw are also
Increasing.
(Show table)

Making conjectures

Number Maximum
of number of
points chords
(N)
1 0
2 1
3 3
4 6
5 10
6 15
 7 21
8 28
9 36
10 45

Looking for patterns

On the table, we can see that when we multiply the n (number of points) to n-1 and divide it to 2, the
value that we will get is the maximum number of chords.

n(n−1)
C=
2
Test conjectures
1. When n= 16

n ( n−1 ) 16 ( 16−1 ) 16 ( 15 )
C= = = =120
2 2 2
therefore ,∈16 points the maximum value of chords we can draw are120
2. When n=17

n ( n−1 ) 17 ( 17−1 ) 17(16)

C= = = =282
2 2 2
therefore ,∈17 points the maximum value of chords we can draw are282.