Big Ideas Math Geometry, 2014
BI
Big Ideas Math Geometry, 2014 View details
7. Circles in the Coordinate Plane
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Exercise 27 Page 580

The center of the circle will be the point of intersection of the perpendicular bisectors of the sides of

Equation:
Explanation: See solution.

Practice makes perfect

We are given the vertices of 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 circle will be the point of intersection of the perpendicular bisectors of the sides of the inscribed triangle. First we can find the perpendicular bisector of side To do this we should evaluate the midpoint of this side.
The midpoint of side occurs at point Since this side is vertical the line perpendicular to this side will be horizontal. Therefore the perpendicular bisector of this side is the line
Next we will find the perpendicular bisector of side Again we will start with evaluating the midpoint of this side.
The midpoint of side occurs at point Next we will evaluate the slope of this side. To do this we can use the Slope Formula and substitute points and
Simplify right-hand side
The slope of side is Now, let's recall that the product of the slopes of the perpendicular segments is always equal to Using this information, we can conclude that the slope of the perpendicular bisector of this side is
Using this information, we can write a partial equation for the line that is a perpendicular bisector of side
By substituting the midpoint we can find the value of
The equation of line is
As we can see, the perpendicular bisectors of the sides of this triangle intersect at point and this point is the center of the circle circumscribed about To evaluate the radius we will evaluate the distance between the center and any vertex. We can choose
Simplify right-hand side
The radius of the circle is
Finally, we can write the equation of this circle by substituting the center point and the radius into the standard equation of a circle.