We are given the vertices of △XYZ and asked to evaluate the equation of the circle circumscribed about this triangle. First, let's draw this triangle in the coordinate plane.
Now, let's recall that the center of the will be the point of intersection of the of the sides of the triangle. First we can find the of side
XY. To do this we should evaluate the of this side.
(24+4,25+13)
(28,218)
(4,9)
The midpoint of side
XY occurs at point
(4,9). Since this side is the line perpendicular to this side will be . Therefore the perpendicular bisector of this side is the line
y=9.
Next we will find the perpendicular bisector of side
YZ. Again we will start with evaluating the midpoint of this side.
(28+4,29+13)
(212,222)
(6,11)
The midpoint of side
YZ occurs at point
(6,11). Next we will evaluate the of this side. To do this we can use the and substitute points
Y and
Z.
m=x2−x1y2−y1
m=8−49−13
m=-1
The slope of side
YZ is
-1. Now, let's recall that the product of the slopes of the segments is always equal to
-1. Using this information, we can conclude that the slope of the perpendicular bisector of this side is
1.
-1⋅1=-1
Using this information, we can write a partial equation for the line that is a perpendicular bisector of side
YZ.
y=1x+b ⇒ y=x+b
By substituting the midpoint
(6,11) we can find the value of
b.
The equation of line is
y=x+5.
As we can see, the perpendicular bisectors of the sides of this triangle intersect at point
(4,9), and this point is the center of the circle circumscribed about
△XYZ. To evaluate the radius we will evaluate the between the center
(4,9) and any vertex. We can choose
X(4,5).
The radius of the circle is
4.
Finally, we can write the equation of this circle by substituting the center point and the radius into the .
(x−4)2+(y−9)2=42⇓(x−4)2+(y−9)2=16