How to find inradius of a triangle

The radius of a polygon's incircle or of a polyhedron's insphere, denoted or sometimes (Johnson 1929). A polygon possessing an incircle is same to be inscriptable or tangential.

The inradius of a regular polygon with sides and side length is given by

The following table summarizes the inradii from some nonregular inscriptable polygons.

For a triangle,

where is the area of the triangle, , , and are the side lengths, is the semiperimeter, is the circumradius, and , , and are the angles opposite sides , , and (Johnson 1929, p. 189). If two triangle side lengths and are known, together with the inradius , then the length of the third side can be found by solving (1) for , resulting in a cubic equation.

Equation (◇) can be derived easily using trilinear coordinates. Since the incenter is equally spaced from all three sides, its trilinear coordinates are 1:1:1, and its exact trilinear coordinates are . The ratio of the exact trilinears to the homogeneous coordinates is given by

But since in this case,

Q.E.D.

Other equations involving the inradius include

where is the semiperimeter, is the circumradius, and are the exradii of the reference triangle (Johnson 1929, pp. 189-191).

Let be the distance between inradius and circumradius , . Then the Euler triangle formula states that

or equivalently

(Mackay 1886-87; Casey 1888, pp. 74-75). These and many other identities are given in Johnson (1929, pp. 186-190).

For a Platonic or Archimedean solid, the inradius of the dual polyhedron can be expressed in terms of the circumradius of the solid, midradius , and edge length as

and these radii obey

See also

Carnot's Theorem, Circumradius, Euler Triangle Formula, Japanese Theorem, Midradius

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References

Casey, J. A Sequel to the First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid, Containing an Easy Introduction to Modern Geometry with Numerous Examples, 5th ed., rev. enl. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, & Co., 1888.Coxeter, H. S. M. and Greitzer, S. L. Geometry Revisited. Washington, DC: Math. Assoc. Amer., p. 10, 1967.Johnson, R. A. Modern Geometry: An Elementary Treatise on the Geometry of the Triangle and the Circle. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1929.Mackay, J. S. "Historical Notes on a Geometrical Theorem and its Developments [18th Century]." Proc. Edinburgh Math. Soc. 5, 62-78, 1886-1887.Mackay, J. S. "Formulas Connected with the Radii of the Incircle and Excircles of a Triangle." Proc. Edinburgh Math. Soc. 12, 86-105, 1893.Mackay, J. S. "Formulas Connected with the Radii of the Incircle and Excircles of a Triangle." Proc. Edinburgh Math. Soc. 13, 103-104, 1894.

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Inradius

Cite this as:

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

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