Section 4-6: Reflecting Polygons (Day 28)

Section 4-6 of the U of Chicago text considers what happens when we reflect an entire polygon -- not just individual points or even a segment or angle.

Still, the section begins with a theorem on what happens when we reflect a single point twice. Suppose we have two points, F and G and a reflecting line m. Now suppose I told you that the mirror image of F is G. So where do you think the mirror image of G is? If we drew this out and showed it to a student, chances are the student will say that the mirror image of G is F. The book gives a proof of this fact -- by the definition of reflection, G as the mirror image of F means that m is the perpendicular bisector of FG. But FG is the same segment as GF, so its perpendicular bisector is still m. And so, by the definition of reflection again, this would make F the mirror image of G. QED

The text calls this the Flip-Flop Theorem:

If F and F' are points or figures and r(F) = F', then r(F') = F.

Recall that the text often uses the function notation r(F) to denote the reflection image of F. So the theorem can be written as:

If F and F' are points or figures and the mirror image of F is F', then the mirror image of F' is F.

And one can use even more function notation than the text and write the theorem as:

If F is a point or figure, then r(r(F)) = F.

So here's a two-column proof of the Flip-Flop Theorem:

Given: r(F) = F'
Prove: r(F') = F

Proof:
Statements                        Reasons
1. r(F) = F'                       1. Given
2. m is the perp. bis. of FF' 2. Definition of reflection (meaning)
3. FF' = F'F                      3. Reflexive Property of Equality
4. m is the perp. bis. of F'F 4. Substitution Property of Equality
5. r(F') = F                       5. Definition of reflection (sufficient condition)

Notice that this proof uses both the meaning and the sufficient condition parts of the definition of reflection -- this occurs in other proofs as well. For example, a proof of the theorem "all right angles are congruent" (Euclid's Fourth Postulate) uses both the meaning and the sufficient condition parts of the definition of right angle.

But the above proof is a little strange. We explained earlier the significance of Statement 3 in the above proof -- but the problem is that we need a reason as to why FF' and F'F are the same segment. There is no actual definition, postulate, or theorem that states this directly. The reason I wrote "Reflexive Property" above is that this often occurs in other proofs -- especially triangle congruence proofs that are used to prove that certain quadrilaterals are parallelograms. For example, in Section 7-7, we wish to prove that quadrilaterals with opposite sides congruent are parallelograms. The proof at the beginning of that lesson divides quadrilateral ABCD into two triangles, ABD and CDB, which the text then proves are congruent by SSS. But Step 2 of that proof reads:

2. BD is congruent to DB   2. Reflexive Property of Congruence

And so I did the same in the above proof. Of course, it's awkward to follow a statement that uses the "Reflexive Property" (that some object equals itself) with one that uses the "Substitution Property." (So we're substituting an object for itself?)

Some people may point out that now we're being overly formalistic here. The Flip-Flop Theorem is obviously true -- the two-column proof only serves to confuse the students. Perhaps if even I, as a teacher, have trouble filling in all the steps in the "Reasons" column (like Step 3 above), it means that the proof is so simple that it's better written as a paragraph proof (as the U of Chicago text has done) and not as a two-column proof.

Here's one final way to state the Flip-Flop Theorem:

A reflection is an involution.

An involution is simply a function or translation such that performing it twice on a point or figure gives the original point or figure. Therefore composition of an involution with itself is the identity. In function notation, f(f(x)) = x.

Now the other concept introduced in this chapter is orientation. The important concept, added to the Reflection Postulate as part f, is that reflections switch orientation.

But what exactly is the "orientation" of a polygon? The text explains that, in naming the vertices of a polygon, we can move either clockwise or counterclockwise around the polygon. The important idea here is that if pentagon ABCDE is clockwise and we reflect it, then A'B'C'D'E' is counterclockwise.

Then the book proceeds to tell us that "orientation" is undefined -- just like point, line, and plane. As we mentioned earlier, we only discover what an undefined term is by using postulate. So we have the Point-Line-Plane Postulate to tell us what points, lines, and planes are, and we have part f of the Reflection Postulate to tell us what orientation is. We may not know what orientation actually is, but we do know that whatever it is, reflections switch it.

The idea that reflections switch orientation shows up later on. In particular, translations and rotations preserve orientation, because they are the compositions of two reflections -- so the first reflection switches it, and the second switches it back.

Also, a question that often comes up is, if translations and rotations are the compositions of two reflections, maybe reflections are the composition of two rotations, or two of something else. As it turns out, this is impossible. Reflections can't be the composition of two of the same type of transformation, because of orientation. Either the orientation is switched and switched back, or it isn't switched at all. (If you want a reflection to be some transformation composed with itself, you must do something complicated, such as cut the plane into strips, then translate some of the strips and reflect the others.)

Is it possible to define "orientation"? We think back to Chapter 1, where the term "point," although undefined, can be modeled with an ordered pair. If we know all of the x- and y-coordinates of the vertices of the polygon, then we can plug it into a complicated formula such that if the answer is positive, then the orientation must be counterclockwise, and if the answer is negative, then the orientation must be clockwise. (If it's zero, then the points are collinear, which means that they don't form a polygon at all.) What's cool about the formula is that the number -- not just the sign -- actually means something. In particular, if we divide the number by two, we get the area of the polygon! But I won't give the formula here.

There's also a simpler version of the formula, but it only works if the polygon is convex. Notice the picture of octagon FGHIJKLM in the text. The book points out that determining its orientation is more difficult because it's nonconvex.

A much more intuitive way of thinking about orientation is if the preimage and image aren't figures, but words. If we hold up words to a mirror, then unless we're lucky and choose a word like MOM, the image will be illegible, since reflections reverse orientation. But if we translated the words instead, then we can still read the words (unless by "translation" we mean translation into another language).

One final note about orientation: A well-known math teacher blogger named Kate Nowak -- she calls her blog "Function of Time" or f(t) in function notation -- recently gave an Opening Task to her geometry classes:

http://function-of-time.blogspot.com/2014/08/arguing-about-shapes.html

Now Nowak gave her classes pairs of figures, and the students had to identify whether the two figures are "the same" or "not the same." As it turned out, the students easily reached a consensus if the two figures have the same orientation, but they disagreed if the orientations were different:

One group: "We said set C is not the same because you have to flip it."
Me [Nowak -- dw]: "Great."
Other group: "Wait a minute, we said set C is the same because we thought flipping was okay."
Me: "Also great."
Yet another group: "So which is it? We said they are the same."
Me: "...   ...   ...  because... ?"