Centroid of triangles associated with a curve

Abstract

Archimedes showed that the area between a parabola and any chord $AB$ on the parabola is four thirds of the area of triangle $\Delta ABP$, where P is the point on the parabola at which the tangent is parallel to the chord $AB$. Recently, this property of parabolas was proved to be a characteristic property of parabolas. With the aid of this characterization of parabolas, using centroid of triangles associated with a curve we present two conditions which are necessary and sufficient for a strictly locally convex curve in the plane to be a parabola.