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October 2010

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There are 120 (five factorial) ways for the order of the edges and two ways to place the right angles (either adjacent or not).

Once we define the order and place the right angles, we can compute the area using the Pythagorean theorem and Heron's formula.
Enumerating over several possible 5-tuples and reviewing all these possibilities for the lake, we can verify that there is only one possible area for a convex pentagon.

The smallest solution we found is 2=4=12-6-5 (where "=" is a right angle) with an area of ~33.99.

The smallest lake we know of (thanks, John T. Robinson ) that has an integer for its area is 2=5=20-6-13 (or 6=5=20-2-13) which has an area of 70.
The 22=19=81-37-25 lake has a nice round area: 1000.


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