Triangles of foots of perpendiculars (Q2807976)

This article concerns the pedal triangle of a point \(S\) in the plane of a fixed triangle \( ABC\) whose vertices are, by definition, the feet of perpendiculars dropped from \(S\) to the sidelines of \(\triangle ABC.\) The point \(S\) is called the generating point of the pedal triangle associated to it. The study of pedal triangles has a long history, one of the early results discovered in 1797 by William Wallace (and misattributed to Robert Simson) is that when \(S\) belongs to the circumcircle \(k\) of \(\triangle ABC\) then the feet of the perpendiculars to the sides of the triangle belong to a straight line (the so-called Simson's line), so in this case the pedal triangle is degenerate. The pedal triangle of the circumcenter \(M\) is the medial triangle of \(\triangle ABC,\) which turns out to have the largest area of all pedal triangles generated by points \(S\) inside the reference triangle.NEWLINENEWLINEIn this excellent article, the author presents some old and some new results about pedal triangles, deriving the properties as they may be heuristically discovered by a skillful use of a dynamical geometric software (DGS), such as GeoGebra, and then proved formally by methods of synthetic geometry. The author advocates the use of DGS in order to create and analyze figures and come up with conjectures regarding pedal triangles that may spring from such an analysis, subsequently to be verified by a proof.NEWLINENEWLINEThe vertices of a pedal triangle belonging to the sidelines opposite to vertices \(A\), \(B\), \(C\) are denoted respectively by \(D\), \(E\), \(F\) and the angles at vertices in a triangle are denoted by corresponding letters of the Greek alphabet so that \(\varphi\) and \(\gamma,\) for example, will denote the angles at vertices \(F\) and \(C\) in the respective triangles. The author first proves that one can generate pedal triangles of any shape (the `shape' being an equivalence class of similar triangles). The angle measures of any of the angles \(\delta\), \(\epsilon\), \(\varphi\) can take all values from \(0^\circ\) to \(180^\circ\) as \(S\) moves along a suitable diameter. Then fixing the value of one of the angles of the pedal triangle, say \(\varphi\), the locus of points \(S\) is determined for which the angle at vertex \(F\) in the pedal triangle will be equal to \(\varphi.\) That locus consists of a pair of circular arcs subtended by the corresponding side \(AB\) so that \(\angle ASB = \gamma + \varphi\) for points on one arc (lying inside the circumcircle \(k\)) and \(\angle ASB = |\gamma - \varphi|\) for points on the other arc (lying outside \(k\)), the two arcs being images of each other under circular inversion in \(k.\) Since the shape of a triangle is determined by the measures of its two angles, one finds the generating point \(S\) in the intersection of corresponding arcs upon two sides of \(\triangle ABC\) that are inside of \(k\) as well as another generating point \(S^\prime\) in the intersection of the two other corresponding arcs. \(S^{\prime}\) is the image of \(S\) under the inversion in \(k\) and the two pedal triangles generated by \(S\) and \(S^{\prime}\) are (inversely) similar. In effect, one can select a location of point \(S\) anywhere in the plane and consider the image \(S^{\prime}\) under the inversion in \(k,\) denoting by \(T\) the intersection of \(S S^{\prime}\) with \(k.\) Then, the pedal triangles of \(S\) and \(S^{\prime}\) are inversely similar and the author shows that there is a dilative reflection with axis \(s\) and center \(Z \in s\) that maps one pedal triangle onto the other. If \(M\) is the center of \(k,\) the stretching factor (coefficient of dilation) is \(x = |MT|/|MS|.\) The author invites the reader to use a DGS to observe (as he himself has done) the locus of points \(Z\) as one varies the position of point \(S\) in the plane, the picture obtained being so convincing to lead immediately to the formulation of the following theorem that the author proves: Let \(S\) and \(S^{\prime}\) be two points inverse to each other under the reflection in the circumcircle \(k\) of a triangle \(ABC\) and let \(T\) be the point of \(k\) between \(S\) and \(S^{\prime}.\) Then, for the pedal triangles generated by \(S\) and \(S^{\prime}\) one has 1. The axis \(s\) of the dilative reflection that takes \(\triangle DEF\) to \(\triangle D^\prime E^\prime F^\prime\) is the Simson line of point \(T.\) 2. The center \(Z\) of this dilative reflection belongs to the Feuerbach's nine-point circle of \(\triangle ABC.\) The author observes that when the segment \(MT\) assumes some special positions (e.g. when passes through a vertex, is parallel to one side, or is a perpendicular bisector of a side of \(\triangle ABC\)) then \(Z\) coincides with one of the nine characteristic points of the Feuerbach's circle. Moreover, if \(T\) moves around the circumcircle \(k\) then \(Z\) moves around the nine-point circle in the opposite direction with the same linear velocity (twice the angular velocity).NEWLINENEWLINEFew other results are mentioned that can be motivated through experimentation with a DGS. If a point \(S\) moves along a circle which is concentric to the circumcircle \(k\) then the area of the pedal triangle \(DEF\) remains constant, which is a consequence of the area relationship \( F_{\triangle DEF} = \frac 1 4 \cdot F_{\triangle ABC}\cdot | 1 - |MS|^2/r^2 | , \) first formulated by Gergonne (1823). A generalization of this result by Jakob Steiner (1826) states that for an arbitrary given polygon the locus of points \(S\) for which the pedal polygon of \(S\) has constant area is a circle. Next, for a given \(\triangle ABC\) one can consider inscribed equilateral triangles whose vertices belong to the sides of \(ABC.\) Among them, the smallest one turns out to be a pedal triangle, and the author surmises that its generating point \(S\) may have another geometric meaning which needs to be clarified.