puts points on the plane such that no three of them are collinear. adds a sixth point that is not collinear with any two of the former points. wants to eventually construct two triangles from the six points such that one can be placed inside another. Can put the points in such a manner so that he would always be able to construct the desired triangles? (We say that triangle can be placed inside triangle if is congruent to a triangle that is located completely inside .)
Solution
Firstly, we present an obvious lemma.
Lemma 1. If for two triangles and , we have , and , then can be placed into .
Let be an equilateral triangle with center . We denote the radius of circumcircle of this triangle and the length of its altitudes by and , respectively (Clearly, ). Let be a point close to such that and angles , and are all in the interval . We claim that if puts the points and ; he would be able to construct the desired triangles.
Now we go to some cases, according to the place of sixth point, say .
* If lies inside the triangle, then is located completely inside .
* If lies inside the circumcircle of but outside of the triangle, we have
On the other hand, since is outside of , and . So is the shortest side of triangle . Therefore, . Now since , and , according to the lemma, triangle can be placed inside .
* If lies outside the circumcircle of , triangles , and cover the triangle . So one of them, for example contains . Therefore, triangle is located inside . On the other hand, since can be placed into ( is in one of congruent triangles , or ), we obtain that can be placed into .