Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /4 of 10

Geometry Difficulty 5.9 AIME, harder Find the answer Italy

Problem:

Given a cube of side 1010, we consider a plane that passes through exactly 66 of the midpoints of its edges; we call these points A,B,C,D,E,FA, B, C, D, E, F and we suppose that the sides of the hexagon ABCDEFABCDEF each lie on a face of the cube. We then consider a second plane containing the segment ABAB and perpendicular to the face containing ABAB. What is the volume of the portion of the cube contained between the two planes?

Pick one

Solution

Solution:

The answer is (C)\mathbf{(C)}. Let VV be the volume we want to compute, and let XX be respectively the volume of the portion of the cube cut off by the plane passing through the 66 midpoints, and YY the volume of the region cut off by the plane perpendicular to the face containing ABAB. We thus have V+X+Y=l3V + X + Y = l^{3}, where l=10l = 10 is the side of the cube. One can see that X=l32X = \frac{l^{3}}{2}; indeed, every plane passing through the center of a cube cuts the cube into two equal parts: to prove this one can perform a central symmetry about the center of the cube and note that the plane is mapped to itself (since the point with respect to which we are performing the symmetry belongs to the plane), the cube is likewise mapped to itself (because we are symmetrizing with respect to its center), but the two parts of the cube divided by the plane are exchanged (this can easily be seen by looking at how the vertices of the cube behave). YY instead is the volume of a prism of height ll whose base is an isosceles right triangle of side l2\frac{l}{2}, which therefore has area l28\frac{l^{2}}{8}. We thus have Y=l38Y = \frac{l^{3}}{8}, and consequently
V=l3l32l38=38l3=375. V = l^{3} - \frac{l^{3}}{2} - \frac{l^{3}}{8} = \frac{3}{8} l^{3} = 375.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from it; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.