Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2019/ib/paper-3/5e/solution

On the unit sphere, the spherical excess formula gives the area of a spherical triangle as
For a sphere of radius , the right side is multiplied by .
Join an interior point of a convex spherical -gon to its vertices by geodesics. The resulting spherical triangles contain all polygon angles and angles summing to at the interior point. Adding their spherical excesses gives
For a regular polygon with interior angle , positivity of area requires , while strict convexity requires . Both limiting values can be approached by regular polygons, so

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