The height of isosceles trapeze equals to h and his area to h2. What is the measure of the angle between the two diagonals?
Solution
Let ABCD be the isosceles trapeze with height h and area P=h2. Let S be the intersection point of the diagonals and S′ and S′′ are the bases of the altitudes from S to AB and CD correspondently. The triangles SS′′D and SS′B are similar because they have equal angles. So we get that SS′′:DS=SS′:BS′. Let a and b be the lengths of AB and CD correspondently and SS′=h1, SS′′=h2. Then we have that h1+h2=h and h2:2b=h1:2a. Hence 2a=2bh2h1. (1)
From the condition in the problem we have 2a+bh=h2, or 2a+b=h. From the equality (1) and the last equality we have 2bh2h1+2b=h i.e. 2b=h2. Similarly 2a=h1. So SS′′D and SS′B are isosceles and right-angled triangles. The angle between the diagonals is right angle.
Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track
puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.
Source: MathNet,
licensed CC-BY-4.0.
Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.