IIT JEE 1984

Geometry Level pending

If the vertices P P , Q Q , R R of a P Q R \bigtriangleup PQR 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)

Orthocentre Centroid Incentre Circumcentre

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1 solution

Chris Lewis
Apr 15, 2020

The key observation is that the intersection of two straight lines with equations of the form a 1 x + b 1 y = c 1 a_1 x+b_1 y=c_1 and a 2 x + b 2 y = c 2 a_2 x+b_2 y=c_2 , where a i , b i , c i 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 ) (0,0) , ( 1 , 0 ) (1,0) and ( 0 , 1 ) (0,1) .

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