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Baltic Way competition problems, 2013

Geometry Difficulty 5.7 AIME, harder Prove it Baltic Way

Consider a tetrahedron bounded by four right-angled triangles. It is known that three of its edges have the same length ss. Compute its volume.

Solution

The three equal edges clearly cannot bound a face by themselves, for then this triangle would be equilateral and not right-angled. Nor can they be incident to the same vertex, for then the opposite face would again be equilateral.

Hence we may name the tetrahedron ABCDABCD in such a way that AB=BC=CD=sAB = BC = CD = s. The angles ∠ABC\angle ABC and ∠BCD\angle BCD must then be right, and AC=BD=s2AC = BD = s\sqrt{2}. Suppose that ∠ADC\angle ADC is right. Then by the Pythagorean Theorem applied to ACDACD, we find AD=sAD = s. The reverse of the Pythagorean Theorem applied to ABDABD, we see that ∠DAB\angle DAB is right too. The quadrilateral ABCDABCD then has four right angles, and so must be a square.

From this contradiction, we conclude that ∠ADC\angle ADC is not right. Since we already know that AC>CDAC > CD, ∠CAD\angle CAD cannot be right either, and the right angle of ACDACD must be ∠ACD\angle ACD. The Pythagorean Theorem gives AD=s3AD = s\sqrt{3}.

From the reverse of the Pythagorean Theorem, we may now conclude that ∠ABD\angle ABD is right. Consequently, ABAB is perpendicular to BCDBCD, and the volume of the tetrahedron may be simply calculated as
AB⋅BC⋅CD6=s36. \frac{AB \cdot BC \cdot CD}{6} = \frac{s^3}{6}.

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