In geometry, the incenter of a triangle is a triangle center, a point defined for any triangle in a way that is independent of the triangle's placement or scale. The incenter may be equivalently defined as the point where the internal angle bisectors of the triangle cross, as the point equidistant from the triangle's sides, as the junction point of the medial axis and innermost point of the grassfire transform of the triangle, and as the center point of the inscribed circle of the triangle.
Together with the centroid, circumcenter, and orthocenter, it is one of the four triangle centers known to the ancient Greeks, and the only one of the four that does not in general lie on the Euler line. It is the first listed center, X(1), in Clark Kimberling's Encyclopedia of Triangle Centers, and the identity element of the multiplicative group of triangle centers.[1][2]
For polygons with more than three sides, the incenter only exists for tangential polygons - those that have an incircle that is tangent to each side of the polygon. In this case the incenter is the center of this circle and is equally distant from all sides.
- ^ Kimberling, Clark (1994), "Central Points and Central Lines in the Plane of a Triangle", Mathematics Magazine, 67 (3): 163–187, doi:10.1080/0025570X.1994.11996210, JSTOR 2690608, MR 1573021.
- ^ Encyclopedia of Triangle Centers Archived 2012-04-19 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 2014-10-28.