Sitemap
Benjamin Usoroh

Benjamin Usoroh

A guy who plays basketball and has interesting ideas

A True 3D Pythagorean Theorem

1 min readDec 6, 2025

a² + b² = c²

You have heard it a bunch of times when it comes to triangles but what does it even mean?

The formula is the sum of two squares to form a bigger square and it’s used for triangles is because the lengths of the three squares can be used to form a shape (a triangle) whilst following the formula.

What would a 3D version of this look like then?

a³ + b³ = c³ isn’t it because it can never result in a positive whole number according to Fermat’s Last Theorem.

Get Benjamin Usoroh’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

a² + b² + c² = d² is used to find the diagonals in a cube or cuboid but it’s not exactly what I’m aiming for.

When I think of true 3D version of the Pythagorean Theorem, I think of this, a³ + b³ + c³ = d³

What this formula means is, the sum of three cubes to form a bigger square

A very loved number is the square root of 2, which is the diagonal of a unit square and the length of the square gotten from combining 2 unit squares

If you do the same thing with the formula I proposed then you get the cube root of 3 (1.44224957)

From my many attempts I haven’t found a way to visualise this formula in the same way the Pythagorean Theorem can be visualised using a triangle

The only real use I’ve gotten from this formula is a better understand of volume and how they can be represented

--

--

Benjamin Usoroh
Benjamin Usoroh

Written by Benjamin Usoroh

A guy who plays basketball and has interesting ideas