Interactive · 4 questions
Converse of isosceles triangle
As in properties of isosceles triangles (Isosceles Triangle Theorem), it's important to note that it is not immediately obvious that
- A triangle has two congruent sides and
- A triangle has two congruent angles
are equivalent statements.
In this section we do indeed want to show their equivalence.
In the isosceles triangle theorem, we showed that statement that
...so to prove that 1 and 2 are equivalent, it remains to show that
So in particular, we would like to show
If a triangle has two congruent angles, then the sides opposite those angles are congruent.
Let's take a triangle with angles and equal.
As in the proof of the original Iscosceles Triangle Theorem, we want to draw the line to the midpoint of But we want to use the angle conditions so we will be careful in how we will define
Which of the following makes sense for the definition of ?
Both of the above correct answers give us angle conditions involving which surely should help us. Now we'll just pick one way to define , so let be the foot of the perpendicular from to
See if you can prove that from here.
Great! Here's what I came up with:
We know that From which it follows that So we showed that in a triangle with two congruent angles, the sides opposite those angles are congruent, as desired. :)