The Moduli Space of Acute Triangles

Abstract

As an introduction to the concept of "moduli space" we consider the moduli space of similarity classes of acute and right triangles in the plane. This has a map to the moduli space of elliptic curves which is onto and generically three-to-one. The reason is that from any acute or right triangle we can construct an elliptic curve, and every elliptic curve is isomorphic to one constructed this way.