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Billiard Circumellipse


BilliardCircumellipse

The billiard circumellipse, also called the circumbilliard, of a noncollinear triangle ABC is the unique circumellipse in which ABC is a closed billiard trajectory. Its center is the mittenpunkt M=X_9 (Reznik and Garcia 2021, p. 33). It is the orthic inconic of the excentral triangle and touches its sides at A, B, and C (Reznik and Garcia 2021, p. 45).

The billiard circumellipse and the Mandart inellipse are confocal ellipses (Reznik and Garcia 2021, p. 49). By Poncelet's porism, infinitely many triangles are inscribed in the billiard circumellipse and circumscribed about the Mandart inellipse. They are all closed billiard trajectories and have the same maximal perimeter among triangles inscribed in the billiard circumellipse (Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde, Theorem 1.1). For an equilateral triangle, the billiard circumellipse is the circumcircle and the two foci coincide.


See also

Billiards, Circumellipse, Confocal Ellipses, Excentral Triangle, Mandart Inellipse, Mittenpunkt

Portions of this entry contributed by Floor van Lamoen

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References

Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde. "Problem 2006/3-C." https://www.nieuwarchief.nl/home/problems/pdf/uitwerking-2006-3.pdf.Reznik, D. and Garcia, R. "Circuminvariants of 3-Periodics in the Elliptic Billiard." Int. J. Geom. 10, 31-57, 2021. https://ijgeometry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/3.-31-57.pdf.

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W., with contributions by Floor van Lamoen. "Billiard Circumellipse." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/BilliardCircumellipse.html

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