Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /23 of 26

Geometry Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Find the answer United States

One side of an equilateral triangle of height 2424 lies on line ll. A circle of radius 1212 is tangent to ll and is externally tangent to the triangle. The area of the region exterior to the triangle and the circle and bounded by the triangle, the circle, and line ll can be written as abcπa\sqrt{b} - c\pi, where aa, bb, and cc are positive integers and bb is not divisible by the square of any prime. What is a+b+ca + b + c?

Pick one

Solution

The given situation is shown in the figure below, where DD is the center of the circle, EE is the point of tangency between the circle and the triangle, FF is the intersection of line DEDE with line ll, and GG is the projection of DD onto ll.

Figure 1
Because BAC=60\angle BAC = 60^\circ and DEA=DGF=90\angle DEA = \angle DGF = 90^\circ, both AEF\triangle AEF and DGF\triangle DGF are 3030-6060-9090^\circ right triangles. Therefore DF=24DF = 24, EF=2412=12EF = 24 - 12 = 12, AE=43AE = 4\sqrt{3}, AF=83AF = 8\sqrt{3}, FG=123FG = 12\sqrt{3}, and AG=12383=43AG = 12\sqrt{3} - 8\sqrt{3} = 4\sqrt{3}. The area of kite GAEDGAED is twice the area of GAD\triangle GAD, so it is 48348\sqrt{3}. The area of the 6060^\circ-sector EDGEDG of the circle is 16π122=24π\frac{1}{6} \cdot \pi \cdot 12^2 = 24\pi. Thus the required area, shaded in the figure, is 48324π48\sqrt{3} - 24\pi, and the requested sum is 48+3+24=7548 + 3 + 24 = 75.

OR

The required area is 16\frac{1}{6} of the difference between the area of a circle of radius 1212 and a circumscribed regular hexagon. The hexagon is the union of 66 equilateral triangles of side length s=1223s = 12 \cdot \frac{2}{\sqrt{3}}. The area of the hexagon is 634s26 \cdot \frac{\sqrt{3}}{4}s^2, which equals 2883288\sqrt{3}. The area of the circle is 144π144\pi. Then 16\frac{1}{6} of the difference is 48324π48\sqrt{3} - 24\pi, and the requested sum is 48+3+24=7548 + 3 + 24 = 75.

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.