[Edu-sig] Calculating area of a surface plane on a spherical body.

[Jonathan Pennington]

* Norman Vine <nhv@cape.com> [010918 17:52]:
> Given only three points all you can calculate is the area of 
> the triangle defined by those points.
...
> Note rather then just handing the students a working program
> I would try to have them try to figure this one out on their own
> using the unit sphere and 8 equal triangles as a starting point.

Actually that's what I want to do, but I want to be sure that I have
the solution completely tackled before hand. For clarification, I'm
not using just 3 points but >3 (greater than 3 points). I'm trying to
figure out a general method that will calculate the area given a
number of points greater than 3, it will probably be 4 or 5 most of
the time. That's where I'm having the difficulty.

-J
-- 
Jonathan Pennington	|	john@coastalgeology.org

	 "It's hard to take life too seriously
	    when you realize yours is a joke." -me