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Excircles


Excircle

Given a triangle, extend two sides in the direction opposite their common vertex. The circle tangent to these two lines and to the other side of the triangle is called an excircle, or sometimes an escribed circle. The center J_i of the excircle is called the excenter and lies on the external angle bisector of the opposite angle. Every triangle has three excircles, and the trilinear coordinates of the excenters are -1:1:1, 1:-1:1, and 1:1:-1. The radius r_i of the excircle i is called its exradius.

ExcentralTriangleIncircle

Note that the three excircles are not necessarily tangent to the incircle, and so these four circles are not equivalent to the configuration of the Soddy circles.

No Kimberling centers lie on any of the excircles.

Given a triangle with inradius r, let h_i be the altitudes of the excircles, and r_i their radii (the exradii). Then

 1/(h_1)+1/(h_2)+1/(h_3)=1/(r_1)+1/(r_2)+1/(r_3)=1/r

(Johnson 1929, p. 189).

FeuerbachTriangle

There are four circles that are tangent all three sides (or their extensions) of a given triangle: the incircle I and three excircles J_1, J_2, and J_3. These four circles are, in turn, all touched by the nine-point circle N. The incircle touches the nine-point circle at the Feuerbach point F, and the points of tangency with the excircles form the Feuerbach triangle.

ExcircleCollinearities

Given a triangle DeltaABC, construct the incircle with incenter I and excircle with excenter J_A. Let T_i be the tangent point of DeltaABC with its incircle, T_e be the tangent point of DeltaABC with its excircle J_A, H_A the foot of the altitude to vertex A, M the midpoint of AH_A, and construct Q such that QT_i is a diameter of the incircle. Then M, I, and T_e are collinear, as are A, Q, and T_e (Honsberger 1995).


See also

Excenter, Excenter-Excenter Circle, Excentral Triangle, Excircles Radical Circle, Exradius, Extangents Triangle, Feuerbach's Theorem, Feuerbach Triangle, Nagel Point, Triangle Transformation Principle

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References

Coxeter, H. S. M. and Greitzer, S. L. "The Incircle and Excircles." §1.4 in Geometry Revisited. Washington, DC: Math. Assoc. Amer., pp. 10-13, 1967.Honsberger, R. "An Unlikely Collinearity." §3.3 in Episodes in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Euclidean Geometry. Washington, DC: Math. Assoc. Amer., pp. 30-31, 1995.Johnson, R. A. Modern Geometry: An Elementary Treatise on the Geometry of the Triangle and the Circle. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, pp. 176-177 and 182-194, 1929.Lachlan, R. "The Inscribed and the Escribed Circles." §126-128 in An Elementary Treatise on Modern Pure Geometry. London: Macmillian, pp. 72-74, 1893.

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Excircles

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Excircles." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Excircles.html

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