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We know some congruence rules already: SSS, SAS, ASA, and AAS. Naturally this brings up the question: does SSA also work as a congruence rule?
Well, the answer is actually no. To show this, consider a triangle , where we know , , and .
By the Law of Sines, Clearly, we now know that is fixed. Thus, either or for some value of .
The problem is that this yields two solutions for the triangle, and both are equally correct.
To confirm this issue, try using the Law of Cosines: The problem is that this gives us a quadratic in , and a quadratic generally has two distinct roots!
Thus, we now know that SSA is not a valid congruence rule for a general triangle.
However, there are some special cases in which it does work.