RATIONAL QUADRILATERALS

Abstract

A quadrilateral is said to be rational if its four sides, the two diagonals and the area are all expressible by rational numbers. The problem of constructing rational quadrilaterals dates back to the seventh century when Brahmagupta gave an elegant solution of the problem. In 1848 Kummer gave a method of generating all rational quadrilaterals. In this paper we present an alternative method of generating all rational quadrilaterals. For rational cyclic quadrilaterals, we obtain a complete parametrization and for rational noncyclic quadrilaterals, we give several parametrizations in terms of quadratic and quartic polynomials. The parametrizations obtained in this paper are simpler than the known parametrizations of rational quadrilaterals. We also describe how further parametrizations of rational quadrilaterals may be obtained.