Articles containing proofs | Theorems about triangles and circles | Elementary geometry
Pompeiu's theorem
Pompeiu's theorem is a result of plane geometry, discovered by the Romanian mathematician Dimitrie Pompeiu. The theorem is simple, but not classical. It states the following: Given an equilateral triangle ABC in the plane, and a point P in the plane of the triangle ABC, the lengths PA, PB, and PC form the sides of a (maybe, degenerate) triangle. The proof is quick. Consider a rotation of 60° about the point B. Assume A maps to C, and P maps to P '. Then , and . Hence triangle PBP ' is equilateral and . Then . Thus, triangle PCP ' has sides equal to PA, PB, and PC and the proof by construction is complete (see drawing). Further investigations reveal that if P is not in the interior of the triangle, but rather on the circumcircle, then PA, PB, PC form a degenerate triangle, with the largest being equal to the sum of the others, this observation is also known as Van Schooten's theorem. Pompeiu published the theorem in 1936, however August Ferdinand Möbius had published a more general theorem about four points in the Euclidean plane already in 1852. In this paper Möbius also derived the statement of Pompeiu's theorem explicitly as a special case of his more general theorem. For this reason the theorem is also known as the Möbius-Pompeiu theorem. (Wikipedia).
