Some curious properties and loci problems associated with cubics and other polynomials

Abstract

The article begins with a well-known property regarding tangent lines to a cubic polynomial that has distinct, real zeros. We were then able to generalize this property to any polynomial with distinct, real zeros. We also considered a certain family of cubics with two fixed zeros and one variable zero, and explored the loci of centroids of triangles associated with the family. Some fascinating connections were observed between the original family of the cubics and the loci of the centroids of these triangles. For example, we were able to prove that the locus of the centroid of certain triangles associated with the family of cubics is another cubic whose zeros are in arithmetic progression. Motivated by this, in the last section of the article, we considered families of cubic polynomials whose zeros are in arithmetic progression, along with the loci of the special points of certain triangles arising from such families. Special points include the centroid, circumcentre, orthocentre, and nine-point centre of the triangles. Throughout the article, we used the computer algebra system, Mathematica®, to form conjectures and facilitate calculations. Mathematica® was also used to create various animations to explore and illustrate many of the results.

Keywords:

• arithmetic progression
• centroid
• circumcentre
• cubic polynomials
• locus
• nine-point centre
• orthocentre