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Geometry Difficulty 6.9 National olympiad Prove it Estonia

Mother wants to divide a cake of triangular shape between three kids. She makes a straight cut from one vertex to the midpoint of the opposite side and then another straight cut from another vertex to the midpoint of the opposite side. She gives the piece of quadrilateral shape to Anna, the triangular piece opposite to it to Berta and the remaining two triangular pieces to Clara. Who gets the largest part of cake?

Solutions — 2

Solution 1

Answer: all kids get the same amount.

Let SS be the area of the initial triangle, SAS_A be the area of the quadrilateral piece, SBS_B be the area of Berta's triangle, and S1S_1 and S2S_2 be the areas of the remaining two triangles (Fig. 14). Then S1+SB=S2+SB=12SS_1 + S_B = S_2 + S_B = \frac{1}{2}S (a common altitude while the ratio of the corresponding bases being 12\frac{1}{2}) and SB=2S1S_B = 2S_1 (for similar reasons). Thus S1=S2=16SS_1 = S_2 = \frac{1}{6}S and SB=13SS_B = \frac{1}{3}S, whence also S1+S2=13SS_1 + S_2 = \frac{1}{3}S and SA=13SS_A = \frac{1}{3}S.

Figure 1

Solution 2

Suppose that mother makes one more cut from the third vertex to the midpoint of the opposite side. As all medians of a triangle meet in one point, the new cut divides Anna's and Berta's pieces into two parts while not touching Clara's pieces. So every child gets exactly two pieces. We show that medians of a triangle divide the triangle into six parts of equal area; this implies that all kids get the same amount of cake. Let the triangle be ABCABC, its medians be AD,BEAD, BE and CFCF, and the centroid be GG (Fig. 15). The length of the side BDBD of the triangle BGDBGD is 12\frac{1}{2} of the length of the side BCBC of the triangle ABCABC, the length of the corresponding altitude in the triangle BGDBGD is 13\frac{1}{3} of the length of the corresponding altitude in the triangle ABCABC (since AD=3GD|AD| = 3|GD|, the perpendicular drawn from the point AA to the line BCBC is 3 times longer than the perpendicular drawn from the point GG to the same line). Thus the area of the triangle BGDBGD equals 16\frac{1}{6} of the area of the triangle ABCABC. The same holds for other pieces. Consequently, all pieces have the same area.

Figure 2

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