sines law proof
The goal is to prove the sine law:
where the variables are defined by the triangle
and where is the radius of the circumcircle that encloses our triangle.
Let’s add a couple of lines and define more variables.
So, we now know that
and, therefore, we need to prove
or
From geometry, we can see that
So the proof is reduced to proving that
This is easily seen astrue after examining the top half of the unit circle. So, putting allof our results together, we get
(1) |
The same logic may be followed to show that each of these fractions isalso equal to .
For the final step of the proof, we must show that
We begin by defining our coordinate system. For this, it isconvenient to find one side that is not shorter than the others andlabel it with length . (The concept of a “longest” side is notwell defined in equilateral and some isoceles triangles, but there isalways at least one side that is not shorter than the others.) Wethen define our coordinate system such that the corners of thetriangle that mark the ends of side are at the coordinates and . Our third corner (withsides labelled alphbetically clockwise) is at the point . Let the center of our circumcircle be at. We now have
(2) | |||||
(3) | |||||
(4) |
as each corner of our triangle is, by definition of the circumcircle,a distance from the circle’s center.
Combining equations (3) and (2), we find
Substituting this into equation (2) we find that
(5) |
Combining equations (4) and (5) leaves us with
where we have applied the cosines law in the second to last step.