Can one prove that whether a triangle is a right-angled triangle just by looking at the position vectors of its vertices

vectors

The position vectors of the vertices of the triangle are given as:
\begin{align*}
\overrightarrow{a} &= 3\hat{i}-4\hat{j} -4\hat{k} \\
\overrightarrow{b} &= 2\hat{i}-\hat{j} +\hat{k} \\
\overrightarrow{c} &= \hat{i}-3\hat{j} – 5\hat{k}
\end{align*}

One can simply find out the displacement vectors and then find the square of magnitudes and use Pythagoras theorem, in this specific case, it does work out that $\overrightarrow{b}\cdot\overrightarrow{c}=0$, but I wanted to know that if it's a general result that whether we can simply predict if the triangle will be right-angled just by looking at the position vectors of the vertices.

Best Answer

Example of a non-right-angled triangle where all dot products of position vectors vanish: \begin{align} \vec a &= \hat i\\ \vec b &= \hat j\\ \vec c &= \hat k \end{align}

Example of a right-angled triangle where no products of position vectors are zero: \begin{align} \vec a &= \hat i\\ \vec b &= \hat i + \hat j\\ \vec c &= \hat i + \hat k \end{align}

Thus orthogonality of position vectors is neither necessary nor sufficient for a triangle to be right-angled.