Given a circle of radius in the plane. For a set consisting of triangles, if it satisfies the following two conditions:
(i) every triangle in is inscribed in ,
(ii) no two triangles in have a common interior point,
then we say is superb.
Determine all positive real numbers such that for every positive integer , one can find a superb set consisting of triangles, each of whose triangles has perimeter greater than .
Solution
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First, we show how to construct a good collection of triangles, each of perimeter greater than . This will show that all satisfy the required conditions.
Construct inductively an -gon inscribed in such that is a diameter, and is a good collection of triangles. For , take any triangle inscribed in such that is a diameter; its perimeter is greater than . To perform the inductive step, assume that the -gon is already constructed. Since , one can choose a point on the small arc , close enough to , so that is still greater than . Thus each of the new triangles and has perimeter greater than , which completes the induction step.
We proceed by showing that no satisfies the conditions of the problem. To this end, we assume that there exists a good collection of triangles, each of perimeter greater than , and then bound from above.
Take such that .
Claim. There exists a positive constant such that any triangle with perimeter , inscribed in , has area at least .
Proof. Let be the side lengths of . Since is inscribed in , each side has length at most . Therefore, . Similarly, and . By Heron's formula, . Thus we can set .
Now we see that the total area of all triangles from is at least . On the other hand, does not exceed the area of the disk bounded by . Thus , which means that is bounded from the above.