Properties of Regular Polygons

A polygon is a plane shape (two-dimensional) with straight sides.

Polygons are all around us, from doors and windows to stop signs. Let's explore what makes some of them ‘regular’ and why that matters!

Regular

A regular polygon has:

• all sides equal and
• all angles equal.

Otherwise it is irregular.

Regular Pentagon

Irregular Pentagon

Regular polygons have some cool properties, let's explore them.

Properties of Regular Polygons

So what can we know about regular polygons? First of all, we can work out angles.

Exterior Angle The Exterior Angle is the angle between any side of a shape, and a line extended from the next side.

All the exterior angles of a polygon add up to 360°, so:

Each exterior angle must be 360°/n

(where n is the number of sides)

Press play button to see.

Imagine walking around the edge of a building, turning at each corner. By the time you return to where you started, you've turned a full 360°

Interior Angles

The Interior Angle and Exterior Angle are measured from the same line, so they add up to 180°.

Interior Angle = 180° − Exterior Angle

Since we already know the Exterior Angle is 360°/n:

Interior Angle = 180° − 360°/n

Some polygons have special circles hidden inside and around them! Let's explore them and their names:

"Circumcircle, Incircle, Radius and Apothem ..."

Sounds quite musical if you repeat it a few times, but they are just the names of the "outer" and "inner" circles (and each radius) that can be drawn on a polygon like this:

The "outside" circle is called a circumcircle, and it connects all vertices (corner points) of the polygon.

The radius of the circumcircle is also the radius of the polygon.

The "inside" circle is called an incircle and it just touches each side of the polygon at its midpoint.

The radius of the incircle is the apothem of the polygon.

(Not all polygons have those properties, but all triangles and regular polygons do).

Breaking into Triangles

We can learn a lot about regular polygons by breaking them into triangles like this:

Notice that:

• the "base" of the triangle is one side of the polygon.
• the "height" of the triangle is the "Apothem" of the polygon

Now, the area of a triangle is half of the base times height, so:

To get the area of the whole polygon, just add up the areas of all the little triangles ("n" of them):

Area of Polygon = n × side × apothem / 2

And since the perimeter is all the sides = n × side, we get:

Area of Polygon = perimeter × apothem / 2

A Smaller Triangle

By cutting the triangle in half we get this:

(Note: The angles are in radians, not degrees)

The small triangle is right-angled and so we can use sine, cosine and tangent to find how the side, radius, apothem and n (number of sides) are related:

sin(π/n) = (Side/2) / Radius		Side = 2 × Radius × sin(π/n)
cos(π/n) = Apothem / Radius		Apothem = Radius × cos(π/n)
tan(π/n) = (Side/2) / Apothem		Side = 2 × Apothem × tan(π/n)

There are a lot more relationships like those (most of them just "re-arrangements"), but these are the most useful ones.

More Area Formulas

We can use that to calculate the area when we only know the Apothem:

And there are 2 such triangles per side, or 2n for the whole polygon:

Area of Polygon = n × Apothem² × tan(π/n)

When we don't know the Apothem, we can use the same formula but re-worked for Radius or for Side:

Area of Polygon = ½ × n × Radius² × sin(2 × π/n)

Area of Polygon = ¼ × n × Side² / tan(π/n)

A Table of Values

And here is a table of Side, Apothem and Area compared to a Radius of "1", using the formulas we have worked out:

Type	Name when Regular	Sides (n)	Shape	Interior Angle	Radius	Side	Apothem	Area
Triangle (or Trigon)	Equilateral Triangle	3		60°	1	1.732 (√3)	0.5	1.299 (¾√3)
Quadrilateral (or Tetragon)	Square	4		90°	1	1.414 (√2)	0.707 (1/√2)	2
Pentagon	Regular Pentagon	5		108°	1	1.176	0.809	2.378
Hexagon	Regular Hexagon	6		120°	1	1	0.866 (½√3)	2.598 ((3/2)√3)
Heptagon (or Septagon)	Regular Heptagon	7		128.571°	1	0.868	0.901	2.736
Octagon	Regular Octagon	8		135°	1	0.765	0.924	2.828 (2√2)
...	...
Pentacontagon	Regular Pentacontagon	50		172.8°	1	0.126	0.998	3.133
(Note: values correct to 3 decimal places only)

Graph

And here is a graph of the table above, but with number of sides ("n") from 3 to 30.

Notice that as "n" gets bigger, the Apothem is tending towards 1 (equal to the Radius) and that the Area is tending towards π = 3.14159..., just like a circle.

What is the Side length tending towards?