Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.1 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:
Take a clay sphere of radius 1313, and drill a circular hole of radius 55 through its center. Take the remaining "bead" and mold it into a new sphere. What is this sphere's radius?

Solution

Solution:
Let rr be the radius of the sphere. We take cross sections of the bead perpendicular to the line of the drill and compare them to cross sections of the sphere at the same distance from its center. At a height hh, the cross section of the sphere is a circle with radius r2h2\sqrt{r^{2}-h^{2}} and thus area π(r2h2)\pi\left(r^{2}-h^{2}\right). At the same height, the cross section of the bead is an annulus with outer radius 132h2\sqrt{13^{2}-h^{2}} and inner radius 55, for an area of π(132h2)π(52)=π(122h2)\pi\left(13^{2}-h^{2}\right)-\pi\left(5^{2}\right)=\pi\left(12^{2}-h^{2}\right) (since 13252=12213^{2}-5^{2}=12^{2}). Thus, if r=12r=12, the sphere and the bead will have the same cross-sectional area π(122h2)\pi\left(12^{2}-h^{2}\right) for h12|h| \leq 12 and 00 for h>12|h|>12. Since all the cross sections have the same area, the two clay figures then have the same volume. And certainly there is only one value of rr for which the two volumes are equal, so r=12r=12 is the answer.

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