226 The tangrams
7.1 The Chinese tangram
It is known that exactly 13convexpolygons can be formed from the
tangram.^1 Show them.^2
A very interesting book on the Chinese tangram has recently ap-
peared: J. Slocum,The Tangram Book, Sterling, New York, 2003. I fi-
nally know what the mysterious Chinese character on p.45 of Dudeney’s
Amusements in Mathematicsis. The undeciphered Chinese character is
zhuo ́, to drink. The Chinese inscription reads
Liang rˇ en du ́ `ı zhuo ́(Two people having a drink together),
cˇıq ̄ıqiao zhˇ ̄ıhuajˇˇıng yeˇ!(what a sublimity of the tangram!)(^1) F. T. Wang and C. C. Hsiung, A theorem on the tangram,American Math. Monthly, 49 (1942) 596–599.
(^2) There are 1 triangle, 6 quadrilaterals, 2 pentagons, and 4 hexagons.