Notice again the Continuation Arrow at the top of the microworld. That means that you should click the arrow before you leave this page to continue the experiment. The experiment above reveals an interesting fact about quadrilaterals. In this room of the microworld, you simply construct a quadrilateral by clicking 4 times on the graph window.

 

This time, the midpoints of the 4 sides of the quadrilateral are connected, and a new quadrilateral is thus constructed. But the new quadrilateral appears to be a parallelogram! That is, the opposite sides appear to be equal in length, and parallel to each other.

 

To see if that is so, proceed to the next room by clicking the Continue Arrow at the top of the microworld. There you can change the shape of the quadrilateral and watch the new quadrilateral change.

 

Exercise: What do you think? Is it always a parallelogram? These pictures cannot prove it. Try to decide for sure.

 

Exercise: How does the area of the inner quadrilateral compare with the area of the original?