Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /58 of 82

Geometry Difficulty 5.3 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:

Let ABC\triangle ABC be an equilateral triangle with height 1313, and let OO be its center. Point XX is chosen at random from all points inside ABC\triangle ABC. Given that the circle of radius 11 centered at XX lies entirely inside ABC\triangle ABC, what is the probability that this circle contains OO?

Solution

Solution:

The set of points XX such that the circle of radius 11 centered at XX lies entirely inside ABC\triangle ABC is itself a triangle, ABCA'B'C', such that ABAB is parallel to ABA'B', BCBC is parallel to BCB'C', and CACA is parallel to CAC'A', and furthermore ABAB and ABA'B', BCBC and BCB'C', and CACA and CAC'A' are all 11 unit apart. We can use this to calculate that ABCA'B'C' is an equilateral triangle with height 1010, and hence has area 1003\frac{100}{\sqrt{3}}.

On the other hand, the set of points XX such that the circle of radius 11 centered at XX contains OO is a circle of radius 11, centered at OO, and hence has area π\pi.

The probability that the circle centered at XX contains OO given that it also lies in ABCABC is then the ratio of the two areas, that is,
π1003=3π100. \frac{\pi}{\frac{100}{\sqrt{3}}} = \frac{\sqrt{3}\,\pi}{100}.

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.