English

On the number of perfect triangles with a fixed angle

Combinatorics 2019-10-16 v1

Abstract

Richard Guy asked the following question: can we find a triangle with rational sides, medians, and area? Such a triangle is called a \emph{perfect triangle} and no example has been found to date. It is widely believed that such a triangle does not exist. Here we use the setup of Solymosi and de Zeeuw about rational distance sets contained in an algebraic curve, to show that for any angle 0<θ<π0<\theta < \pi, the number of perfect triangles with an angle θ\theta is finite. A \emph{rational median set} SS is a set of points in the plane such that for every three non collinear points p1,p2,p3p_1,p_2,p_3 in SS all medians of the triangle with vertices at pip_i's have rational length. The second result of this paper is that no irreducible algebraic curve defined over R\mathbb{R} contains an infinite rational median set.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1910.06888,
  title  = {On the number of perfect triangles with a fixed angle},
  author = {Mehdi Makhul},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.06888},
  year   = {2019}
}