The Heron’s formula is a famous formula used to calculate the area of a triangle based on the length of its three sides. It is called “Heron’s Formula” (sometimes called Hero’s formula) after Hero of Alexandria who was a Greek Engineer and Mathematician in 10 – 70 AD.
Your task is to write a function called calculateTriangleArea(). Your function will:
- Take three parameters corresponding to the length of the 3 sides of a triangle: a, b and c,
- Apply Heron’s formula to calculate the area of the triangle,
- Return the area of the triangle.
You will also then need to create a small program that will:
- Ask the user to enter the length of the three sides of a triangle,
- Calculate the area of the triangle using the calculateTriangleArea() function,
- Output the area of the triangle.
Once your code is done, complete the following tests to check it is working as expected:
|Test #||Input Values (in cm)||Expected Output (in cm2)||Pass/Fail?|
|#1||First side: 3
Second side: 4
Third side: 5
|#2||First side: 8
Second side: 10
Third side: 12
|#3||First side: 4
Second side: 8
Third side: 10
Extension Task #1
Create some extra functions to calculate the area of a square, of a rectangle and of a disc. Each function will need to accept the relevant parameters needed to calculate the area of the desired shape.
Extension Task #2
Create a menu system, where the user is asked what shapes they would like to calculate the area of before being asked to enter the relevant dimensions.
Did you know?
Hero published a well-recognized description of a steam-powered device called an aeolipile (sometimes called a “Hero engine”). Among his most famous inventions was a windwheel, constituting the earliest instance of wind harnessing on land.