Polygons with equal area and perimeter but different number of sides?

┌─┐   ┌┐   
│ │   │└─┐
│ └─┐ │  └┐
└───┘ └───┘

Edit: I like the above figures because they're easy to generalize to many sides. But if it's unclear that they have the same area, here's another pair: the L and T tetrominoes.

L tetromino T tetromino

You can imagine sliding the square on the right side up and down relative to the 1x3 bar on the left side; this operation preserves both area and perimeter. Explicitly, both tetrominoes have area 4 and perimeter 10. The L has 6 sides, and the T has 8 sides.


For any triangle there is a rectangle with the same area and perimeter.

proof: by Heron's formula the area of the triangle with semiperimeter $S$ and triangle sides $a,b,c$ is $$\sqrt{S(S-a)(S-b)(S-c)}\leq \sqrt{\frac{8S^4}{27}}$$

A square with semiperimeter $S$ has area $\frac{S^2}{4}\geq\sqrt{\frac{8S^4}{27}}$.

We can then proceed to make the square into a rectangle, making the area smaller and smaller preserving the perimeter. Until the area is as small as the triangle's.


Just worked out a quick example, so the numbers may not be optimal: take a triangle with side lengths 2,3,4 - this has perimeter 9 and area $3\sqrt{15}/4$. It's easy enough to construct a rectangle with this data as well, by solving the equations $st = 3\sqrt{15}/4$ and $2s+2t = 9$. In fact, the sides lengths $s,t$ of the rectangle work out to be $\frac{1}{4}(9 \pm \sqrt{81-12\sqrt{15}})$.