Abstract:
The space of quadrilaterals with fixed side lengths is an elliptic curve, for a generic choice of lengths. Darboux used this fact to prove his porism on foldings.
We study the spaces of oriented and non-oriented quadrilaterals with fixed side lengths. This is done with the help of the biquadratic relations between the tangents of the half-angles and between the squares of the diagonal lengths, respectively.
The duality $(a_1, a_2, a_3, a_4) \leftrightarrow (s-a_1, s-a_2, s-a_3, s-a_4)$ between quadruples of side lengths turns out to preserve the range of the diagonal lengths. In particular, the corresponding spaces of non-oriented quadrilaterals are isomorphic. We show how this is related to Ivory's lemma.
Finally, we prove a periodicity condition for foldings, similar to Cayley's condition for the Poncelet porism.
Key words and phrases:folding of quadrilaterals, porism, elliptic curve, biquadratic equation.
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