Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 7.7 National Olympiad, round 2 Prove it United States

Problem:

Let DD be a dodecahedron which can be inscribed in a sphere with radius RR. Let II be an icosahedron which can also be inscribed in a sphere of radius RR. Which has the greater volume, and why?

Note: A regular polyhedron is a geometric solid, all of whose faces are congruent regular polygons, in which the same number of polygons meet at each vertex. A regular dodecahedron is a polyhedron with 12 faces which are regular pentagons and a regular icosahedron is a polyhedron with 20 faces which are equilateral triangles. A polyhedron is inscribed in a sphere if all of its vertices lie on the surface of the sphere.

The illustration below shows a dodecahedron and an icosahedron, not necessarily to scale.

Figure 1

Solutions — 2

Solution 1

Solution:

DD has the greater volume.

The key idea that we will use is a beautiful relationship between II and DD; they are dual polyhedra. To understand this, note that DD has 12 faces, 30 edges, and 20 vertices. (The 12 pentagonal faces produce 60 edges and 60 vertices, but these are, respectively, double- and triple-counted. Hence there are 60/2=3060/2 = 30 edges and 60/3=2060 / 3=20 vertices). Likewise, II has 20 faces, 30 edges, and 12 vertices. Notice that II has as many vertices as DD has faces, and vice-versa.

Consequently, if we join each center of the faces of an icosahedron to the centers of adjacent faces, we will get a dodecahedron, and vice-versa. (For the other platonic solids, the cube and octahedron are duals of each other, and the tetrahedron is its own dual).

We will use duality to prove an important lemma.

Lemma: If a dodecahedron and an icosahedron can be inscribed in the same sphere, then they circumscribe the same sphere as well.

To see why this is true, imagine II and DD both sitting inside a sphere of radius RR with center OO, which circumscribes both polyhedra. Thus all the vertices of both polyhedra lie on the surface of this sphere. Because the polyhedra are dual, we can place the polyhedra so that for every vertex AA of II, the line AOA O is perpendicular to and passes through the center of a face of DD. Likewise, for every vertex BB of DD, the line BOB O is perpendicular to and passes through the center of a face of II.

The illustration below is an imperfect depiction of a portion of this situation. The left picture is a "top view," as seen by an observer looking directly down at the center of a face of DD. Point AA is a vertex of II, and BB is a vertex of DD.

Figure 2
Top View

Figure 3
Side View

The picture on the right is a "side view" (not-to-scale), showing the projections of AA and BB down to the center OO of the sphere. Let COC O be the perpendicular projection of AOA O onto BOB O. Note that point CC is the center of a face of the icosahedron II (in the Top View, you cannot see CC because it is directly "underneath" BB ), and h=COh=C O is the radius of the inscribed sphere of II. Also r=ACr=A C is the radius of the circumscribed circle about a face of II.

Let EOE O be the perpendicular projection of BOB O on to AOA O. Clearly EO=CO=hE O=C O=h (since AO=BO=RA O= B O=R ), but by duality, EE must be a center of a face of the dodecahedron DD. Consequently, the radius of the inscribed sphere of DD must also equal hh.

Now it is a simple matter to compute and compare the two volumes. Notice that DD consists of 12 pyramids with regular pentagonal bases (each with circumradius rr ) and height hh. Likewise, II consists of 20 pyramids with equilateral triangular bases (each with circumradius rr ) and height hh. Recall that the volume of a pyramid with base area BB and height hh is Bh/3B h / 3. Now we can easily compare the two volumes.

vol(D)vol(I)=h3×12× area of pentagon h3×20× area of triangle  \frac{\operatorname{vol}(D)}{\operatorname{vol}(I)}=\frac{\frac{h}{3} \times 12 \times \text{ area of pentagon }}{\frac{h}{3} \times 20 \times \text{ area of triangle }}
=3× area of pentagon 5× area of triangle =3×5×r22sin725×3×r22sin120=sin72sin60>1. \begin{aligned} & =\frac{3 \times \text{ area of pentagon }}{5 \times \text{ area of triangle }} \\ & =\frac{3 \times 5 \times \frac{r^{2}}{2} \sin 72^{\circ}}{5 \times 3 \times \frac{r^{2}}{2} \sin 120^{\circ}} \\ & =\frac{\sin 72^{\circ}}{\sin 60^{\circ}} \\ & >1 . \end{aligned}

We are using the fact that a regular nn-gon that can be inscribed in a circle of radius rr can be dissected into nn "pie slices" that are isosceles triangles with sides of length rr and vertex angle (360/n)(360 / n)^{\circ}. Thus the area of the regular nn-gon is n×(r2/2)×sin(360/n)n \times\left(r^{2} / 2\right) \times \sin (360 / n)^{\circ}.

Solution 2

Solution:

(sketch) Instead of showing that the inscribed spheres have equal radii, we can use duality and the "top view" used in the previous solution to show that the radius of the circumscribed circle of each face of DD is equal to the radius of the circumscribed circle of each face of II. In other words, the two circles depicted below have the same radii. This fact is attributed to the ancient Greek mathematician Apollonius.

Figure 4

Once this is known, it is easy to deduce that the two polyhedra have identical inscribed sphere radii, and the rest of the solution proceeds as before.

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