Interactive · 1 question
It turns out that points on the perpendicular bisector of a segment have a special, important property. Let's look at an arbitrary point on the perpendicular bisector of a segment again and examine what we see:
We can't really see much from this. However, when we can't see much in a diagram, draw lines!
What line(s) would be best to draw?
So, trying to apply the pythagorean theorem, we draw and , and assign some lengths:
Aha! Now we can use the pythagorean theorem to get: But look at this repetition! We can use the transitive property to get: Then we can take the square root: Since both and are side lengths, they're positive, so we have... !
Using this, we can define an alternate definition of perpendicular bisector:
The perpendicular bisector of a segment is the locus of points equidistant from the two endpoints of the segment.