Dynamics of ellipses inscribed in triangles
Abstract
Suppose that we are given two distinct points, and , in the interior of a triangle, . Is there always an ellipse inscribed in which also passes through and ? If yes, how many such ellipses ? We answer those questions in this paper. It turns out that, except for and on a union of three line segments, there are four such ellipses which pass through and . We also answer a similar question if instead and lie on the boundary of . Finally, an interesting related question, is the following: Given a point, , in the interior of a triangle, , and a real number, , is there always an ellipse inscribed in which passes through and has slope at ? Again, if yes, how many such ellipses ? The answer is somewhat different than for the two point case without specifying a slope. There are cases where no such ellipse exists.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1504.05141,
title = {Dynamics of ellipses inscribed in triangles},
author = {Alan Horwitz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1504.05141},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
21 pages, no figures. The paper has been shortened and the proofs have been simplified. In particular, we worked directly with the system of quadratics in two variables rather than working with the functions obtained by solving those quadratics