If the vertices , , of a are rational points, which of the following points on the triangle is NOT always rational points -
(A rational point is a point whose both coordinates are rational)
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
The key observation is that the intersection of two straight lines with equations of the form a 1 x + b 1 y = c 1 and a 2 x + b 2 y = c 2 , where a i , b i , c i are rational numbers, will always have rational coordinates (as long as the lines are not parallel). Call such a straight line "rational" for convenience below.
Further, the line joining any two rational points is rational, and any line perpendicular to a line joining two rational points will also be rational. (The way to see this is that, algebraically, we're solving simultaneous linear equations with rational coefficients; we never have to take any square roots.)
Using this on the centres...
Orthocentre: this is the intersection of the three altitudes of the triangle. The altitudes are all rational lines; so they always intersect in a rational point.
Circumcentre: this is the intersection of the three perpendicular bisectors of the sides of the triangle. These are all rational lines; so again they always intersect in a rational point.
Centroid: the intersection of the medians; the medians are rational lines, so the centroid is rational.
Incentre: the odd one out. Note that this is constructed using angle bisectors, which are not necessarily rational lines. A simple counterexample is the triangle with vertices ( 0 , 0 ) , ( 1 , 0 ) and ( 0 , 1 ) .