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Geometry Difficulty 5.1 AIME, harder Prove it North Macedonia

The sides of the triangle are a=3a=3, b=4b=4 and c=5c=5. Find if there is a point inside the triangle so that the distance to his sides is less than 11.

Solution

Let ABCABC be the triangle such that BC=a=3\overline{BC}=a=3, AC=b=4\overline{AC}=b=4 and AB=c=5\overline{AB}=c=5. Because a2+b2=32+42=52=c2a^2 + b^2 = 3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2 = c^2, we have that ABCABC is a right triangle.

Let MM be the point inside the triangle such that the distance to his sides is less than 11. Let KK, LL and NN be the points lying on the sides of the triangle. Then, the segments MKMK, MLML and MNMN are the heights to the triangles AMBAMB, BMCBMC and CMACMA, respectively. Therefore

Figure 1

PBMC+PCMA+PAMB=xa2+yb2+zc2<a2+b2+c2=32+42+52=122=6=PABC, P_{BMC} + P_{CMA} + P_{AMB} = \frac{xa}{2} + \frac{yb}{2} + \frac{zc}{2} < \frac{a}{2} + \frac{b}{2} + \frac{c}{2} = \frac{3}{2} + \frac{4}{2} + \frac{5}{2} = \frac{12}{2} = 6 = P_{ABC},
which is a contradiction with PABC=PAMB+PBMC+PCMAP_{ABC} = P_{AMB} + P_{BMC} + P_{CMA}. This means that the point MM does not exist.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.