Geometry is all about a lot of formulae, but it is difficult to remember them. What we will tryto do is come up with some ways to understand and hence memorize formulae. We can alsolook at some general techniques that can help us solve a wide range of problems. To kick off the series we will start with Lines and Triangles followed by Polygons and Circles in the next part. Finally we shall look at Mensuration.

Parallel Lines

When you have a transversal cutting two parallel lines you can have two cases.Case I: The transversal cuts the lines perpendicularly in this case all angles are equal to eachother.Case II: If the transversal does not cut perpendicularly then the angles formed are either acuteor obtuse. Now all angles can be related in the following manner:1. All acute angles are equal to each other 2. All obtuse angles are equal to each other 3. Any acute angle + any obtuse angle = 180

Triangle Inequality

Let’s say you have two sides ‘a’ and ‘b’. If you place them at an angle of 180 degrees, thenyou will get a straight line of length ‘a+b’, which will not lead to a triangle. To get a triangleyou will have to nudge one of the sides up or down, hence the third side will always be lessthan the straight line ‘a+b’. In a similar fashion if you put one line on the top of another thenthe length between the two points is |a-b| again this will not be a triangle. To get a triangleyou will need to nudge one of the sides again hence the third side will always be more than |a-b|. You do not need to check this with all combinations of sides, any two sides will do.

Interior and Exterior Angle Bisection Theorem

It is very easy to remember the interior angle bisection theorem because the ratio is of sideson the same side of the bisector. If you have a triangle ABC where angle A is bisected by ADthen on one side of AD you have AB and BD on the other side you have AC and CD andguess what, their ratios are equal.But unhappily on cursory observation, the exterior angle bisection theorem does not appear as beautiful. So in the same triangle if angle A is bisected externally and the angle bisector cutsline BC at X you will have AX lying outside the triangle. Now imagine this angle bisector actually pivoting inside and becoming the internal angle bisector then you will have AB/BX= AC/CX which is how it actually looks. So it is very easy to get the external bisection ratio by considering it to be an internal bisection.Along with this you will need to know the Appollonius Theorem and the various methods for finding the area of a triangle.

Important Points

There are four different lines we can draw in a triangle, these lines are centered around avertex and its bisection, perpendicularity and mid-point of opposite sides.