1020.44 – Dividing the Yin and the Yang


The familiar yin-yang symbol is the interior of a circle divided into two regions by the joining of two half-circles of half the radius of the big circle, as in the figure below. You are to draw a single straight line segment that divides each of the two areas, yin and yang, in half. Explain why your line segment works!

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Solution

If we let the large circle have radius 22 then each quadrant has area π\pi and each half of the small circle has area π/2\pi /2. This information is included the figure below, part [A].

It follows that yin and yang are each area 2π2 \pi and a 45° line will divide the figure the way we want. In the figure, part [B], on each side of the line there is π\pi worth of yin and ditto of yang.

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