A right(-angled) triangle with a horizontal and a vertical side. The vertical side and the hypotenuse are labeled/labelled three and five, respectively. The horizontal side has a semicircle that is tangent to the hypotenuse.

A semicircle is inscribed in a right(-angled) triangle.

What is the exact area of the semicircle?

Solution

The right(-angled) triangle is a Pythagorean triple: (3, 4, 5).

The semicircle is tangent to the hypotenuse of the right(-angled) triangle and secant to its base.

Then, the tangent line segments have the same length, 3.

Let rr be the radius of the semicircle. Then, we can draw rr tangent to the hypotenuse:

A right/right-angled triangle with a horizontal and a vertical side. The horizontal side and the vertical side are labeled/labelled four and three, respectively. The horizontal side has a semicircle that is tangent to the hypotenuse. The radius of the semicircle is perpendicular to the hypotenuse and it is labeled/labelled r. The hypotenuse at the left of the radius is labeled/labelled two and at the right of the radius is labeled/labelled three.

As the length of the base of the triangle is 4, we have:

A right(-angled) triangle with a horizontal and a vertical side. The vertical side is labeled/labelled three. A double arrow representing the length of the horizontal side is labeled/labelled four. The horizontal side has a semicircle that is tangent to the hypotenuse. The radius of the semicircle is perpendicular to the hypotenuse and it is labeled/labelled r. The hypotenuse at the left of the radius is labeled/labelled two and at the right of the radius is labeled/labelled three. A double arrow representing the distance from the left vertex to the semicircle is labeled/labelled four minus two r.

Using the tangent-secant theorem,

22=4(42r)2^2=4 \left(4-2r \right)
4=4(42r)4=4 \left(4-2r \right)
1=42r1=4-2r
2r=412r=4-1
2r=32r=3
r=32r=\frac{3}{2}

So, the area of the semicircle is

π×(32)22\frac{\pi \times \left( \frac{3}{2} \right)^2}{2}
9π42\frac{\frac{9\pi}{4}}{2}
9π8\frac{9\pi}{8}

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