Tangents of circles problem (example 2)
About this video
This video finds a circumscribed angle A from an inscribed angle D of 48 degrees that intercepts the same arc. The central angle on that arc is twice the inscribed angle, 96 degrees. Since radii meet the tangents at right angles, quadrilateral ABOC gives angle A + 96 = 180, so angle A is 84 degrees.
You'll be able to
- find a central angle as twice an inscribed angle that intercepts the same arc.
- explain why a circumscribed angle and its central angle are supplementary.
- find a circumscribed angle using the angle sum of a quadrilateral.
Key words
- circumscribed angle
- An angle whose two sides are tangent to a circle.
- inscribed angle
- An angle with its vertex on the circle; it measures half its intercepted arc.
- central angle
- An angle with its vertex at the center; it has the same measure as its arc.
- supplementary angles
- Two angles whose measures add up to 180 degrees.
Transcript
Angle A is a circumscribed angle on circle O. So this is angle A right over here. Then when they say it's a circumscribed angle, that means that the two sides of the angle are tangent to the circle. So AC is tangent to the circle at point C. AB is tangent to the circle at point B.
What is the measure of angle A? Now, I encourage you to pause the video now and to try this out on your own. And I'll give you a hint. It will leverage the fact that this is a circumscribed angle as you could imagine. So I'm assuming you've given a go at it. So the other piece of information they give us is that angle D, which is an inscribed angle, is 48 degrees and it intercepts the same arc-- so this is the arc that it intercepts, arc CB I guess you could call it-- it intercepts this arc right over here.
It's the inscribed angle. The central angle that intersects that same arc is going to be twice the inscribed angle. So this is going to be 96 degrees. I could put three markers here just because we've already used the double marker. Notice, they both intercept arc CB so some people would say the measure of arc CB is 96 degrees, the central angle is 96 degrees, the inscribed angle is going to be half of that, 48 degrees.
So how does this help us? Well, a key clue is that angle is a circumscribed angle. So that means AC and AB are each tangent to the circle. Well, a line that is tangent to the circle is going to be perpendicular to the radius of the circle that intersects the circle at the same point.
So this right over here is going to be a 90-degree angle, and this right over here is going to be a 90-degree angle. OC is perpendicular to CA. OB, which is a radius, is perpendicular to BA, which is a tangent line, and they both intersect right over here at B. Now, this might jump out at you.
We have a quadrilateral going on here. ABOC is a quadrilateral, so its sides are going to add up to 360 degrees. So we could know, we could write it this way. We could write the measure of angle A plus 90 degrees plus another 90 degrees plus 96 degrees is going to be equal to 360 degrees.
Or another way of thinking about it, if we subtract 180 from both sides, if we subtract that from both sides, we get the measure of angle A plus 96 degrees is going to be equal to 180 degrees. Or another way of thinking about it is the measure of angle A or that angle A and angle O right over here-- you could call it angle COB-- that these are going to be supplementary angles if they add up to 180 degrees.
So if we subtract 96 degrees from both sides, we get the measure of angle A is equal to-- I don't want to make that look like a less than symbol, let make it-- measure of angle-- this one actually looks more like a-- measure of angle A is equal to 180 minus 96.
Let's see, 180 minus 90 would be 90, and then we subtract another 6 gets us to 84 degrees.
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