Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 4.4 AIME Find the answer Italy

Problem:

Alice, Berto, and Carlo must bury a treasure and decide to bury it at a point equidistant from all three. Knowing that they are located at the vertices of a right triangle with an angle of 3030^{\circ} and with perimeter 6 m6~\mathrm{m}, what will be the distance of the treasure from each of them?

Pick one

Solution

Solution:

The answer is (D). The treasure is buried at the circumcenter OO of the triangle at whose vertices Alice, Berto, and Carlo are located. Since this triangle is right-angled, OO is the midpoint of the hypotenuse. Letting xx be its length expressed in meters, we have x+x2+x23=6x+\frac{x}{2}+\frac{x}{2} \sqrt{3}=6, from which 3+32x=6\frac{3+\sqrt{3}}{2} x=6 and x=2(33)x=2(3-\sqrt{3}). Therefore the distance of the treasure from each of them is 333-\sqrt{3}.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from it; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.