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The best known and simplest formula is = /, where b is the length of the base of the triangle, and h is the height or altitude of the triangle. The term "base" denotes any side, and "height" denotes the length of a perpendicular from the vertex opposite the base onto the line containing the base.
The area of a triangle is its half of the product of the base times the height (length of the altitude). For a triangle with opposite sides ,,, if the three altitudes of the triangle are called ,,, the area is: = = =. Given a fixed base side and a fixed area for a triangle, the locus of apex points is a straight line parallel to the base.
The area formula for a triangle can be proven by cutting two copies of the triangle into pieces and rearranging them into a rectangle. In the Euclidean plane, area is defined by comparison with a square of side length , which has area 1. There are several ways to calculate the area of an arbitrary triangle.
Mathematically, this can be written as + =, where a is the length of one leg, b is the length of another leg, and c is the length of the hypotenuse. [2] For example, if one of the legs of a right angle has a length of 3 and the other has a length of 4, then their squares add up to 25 = 9 + 16 = 3 × 3 + 4 × 4.
Given a triangle with sides of length a, b, and c, if a 2 + b 2 = c 2, then the angle between sides a and b is a right angle. For any three positive real numbers a, b, and c such that a 2 + b 2 = c 2, there exists a triangle with sides a, b and c as a consequence of the converse of the triangle inequality.
Heron's formula is also a special case of the formula for the area of a trapezoid or trapezium based only on its sides. Heron's formula is obtained by setting the smaller parallel side to zero. Expressing Heron's formula with a Cayley–Menger determinant in terms of the squares of the distances between the three given vertices,
This formula can be derived by partitioning the n-sided polygon into n congruent isosceles triangles, and then noting that the apothem is the height of each triangle, and that the area of a triangle equals half the base times the height. The following formulations are all equivalent:
An equilateral triangle is a triangle in which all three sides have the same length, and all three angles are equal. Because of these properties, the equilateral triangle is a regular polygon, occasionally known as the regular triangle. It is the special case of an isosceles triangle by modern definition, creating more special properties.