33. Construct a Triangle Given Its Base, Altitude to the Base and Product of the Other Two Sides

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This Demonstration constructs a triangle given the length
of the base
, the length
of the altitude from
to
and the product
of the other two sides. Since the radius of the circumcircle
is a rational function of
and
, we can construct it using similar triangles.
Contributed by: Izidor Hafner and Marko Razpet (October 2018)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Details
A Cassini oval (or Cassini ellipse) is a quartic curve such that if is on the curve, the product of its distances from two fixed points
and
at a distance
apart is a constant
. Thus the original problem is equivalent to finding the intersections of the oval with a line parallel to the
axis at distance
.
Keeping and
fixed and changing
, we get another construction of points on the Cassini oval.
Snapshots
Permanent Citation