What is the TrigTent?

I spent a fair amount of time pondering this tent at the dinner table, armed with a pencil and a piece of paper. During this process, I discovered an interesting fact about my tent which was true only because of the qualities of the dimensions I picked. I think it's best to explain like this:

Picture a tall thin pyramid:

Now tip that pyramid on its side and rotate it by 45 degrees:

Then if we chop off the bottom half and a few other bits...

We get this shape, which looks an awful lot like my tent!

As it turns out, if the triangles formed by the front and rear of the tent are both 45-45-90 right triangles (i.e. the apex of the triangle is a right angle and the two bottom angles are both 45 degrees) then the tent's shape can be produced by trimming a pyramid as shown above.

This fact doesn't make the tent any lighter or more waterproof or easier to set up, but I think it does give it a certain mathematical purity.

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