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Supporting Australian Mathematics Project: Middle years.

Year 8 icon

Year 8

Measurement and Geometry

Geometrical reasoning - congruence

3 congruent rectangles
Detailed description

A good way to think about congruence is to ask, 'How much information do I need to give someone about a figure if they are going to draw it?' For example, surveyors go to a lot of trouble taking careful measurements of a landscape. They must know that everything important about that landscape can be calculated from the measurements that they have taken.

In an analogous way, a certain minimum amount of information is needed to draw a particular triangle. We will develop the congruence tests for triangles as a solution to this question.