Mnemonic Devices for Points of Concurrency in a Triangle

I have new terms to add to the already-crowded vocabulary bank of geometry.

The terms are PuBliC, BAsIN, CEmeNT, and ALTo.

These four terms I have coined myself are but mnemonic devices to help students and teachers remember the points of concurrency involving a triangle.

The P and B in PuBliC stand for perpendicular bisector. Each of the three sides of any triangle has a perpendicular bisector. All three perpendicular bisectors intersect at a point of concurrency, called circumcenter, the C in PuBliC.

Angle bisector, or bisector of an angle, is represented by B and A in BAsIN. Each of the three angles in any triangle has an angle bisector. All three angle bisectors have a point of concurrency, called incenter. The IN in BAsIN represents incenter.

Together, CE and NT in CEmeNT represent centroid. Centroid is the point of concurrency of a triangle's three medians, the "me" in CEmeNT. The word "middle" is associated with the word median, so I was very excited to find a term that has "me" in the middle.

ALT in ALTo simply means altitude. The lines that pass through each of the three possible altitudes of a triangle have a point of concurrency also. This point of intersection is called orthocenter, the "o" in ALTo.

I came up with these mnemonic devices on my second year of teaching Geometry. I realized it wasn't only my students who had difficulty remembering and associating the points of concurrency. "Mr. Jope" had the same problem, too! :D

Kaela Garcia, one of my freshmen, made this

poster as a project in my Geometry class.

This was my student Samantha Cerda's project.

This was done by Alexis Siller, one of my students.

Victoria Gomez turned in this poster as a project in my Geometry class.