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Geometry Difficulty 3.5 AMC 10/12 Find the answer China

Given a regular triangular prism, the length of each edge is 33. Then the volume of its circumscribed sphere is ______.

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

As shown in Fig. 6.1, let the centroids of faces ABCABC and A1B1C1A_1B_1C_1 be OO and O1O_1, respectively. Denote the midpoint of segment OO1OO_1 as PP. By symmetry, we know that PP is the centre of the circumscribed sphere of the regular triangular prism and PAPA is its radius.

Figure 1
Fig. 6.1

It is easy to find that POAOPO \perp AO, and thus
PA=PO2+AO2=(32)2+(3)2=212. PA = \sqrt{PO^2 + AO^2} = \sqrt{\left(\frac{3}{2}\right)^2 + (\sqrt{3})^2} = \frac{\sqrt{21}}{2}.
Therefore, the volume of the circumscribed sphere is 43π(212)3=7212π\frac{4}{3}\pi\left(\frac{\sqrt{21}}{2}\right)^3 = \frac{7\sqrt{21}}{2}\pi.

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