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An analytic proof of a theorem of Grace

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Abstract

A tangent sphere of a tetrahedron is a sphere that is tangent to all four face-planes (each being the affine hull of a face of the tetrahedron). Two tangent spheres of a tetrahedron are called neighboring if exactly one face-plane separates them. J. H. Grace proved that for any pair ST of neighboring tangent spheres of a tetrahedron, there is a sphere passing through the three vertices (of the tetrahedron) lying on the separating face-plane of ST that is tangent to both ST in the same fashion (i.e., either externally tangent to both ST or internally tangent to both ST). His proof of this result was done by applying Lie’s line-sphere transformation to Schläfli’s double-six theorem for lines. The purpose of this paper is to present a proof of this result by direct calculations.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the reviewer for careful reading of the manuscript and many suggestions.

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Correspondence to Hiroshi Maehara.

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Maehara, H., Martini, H. An analytic proof of a theorem of Grace. J. Geom. 114, 27 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00022-023-00691-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00022-023-00691-5

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