Problem:
Penta chooses 5 of the vertices of a unit cube. What is the maximum possible volume of the figure whose vertices are the 5 chosen points?
Problem:
Penta chooses 5 of the vertices of a unit cube. What is the maximum possible volume of the figure whose vertices are the 5 chosen points?
Solution:
The answer is .
Label the vertices of the cube , such that is the top face of the cube, is directly below , is directly below , is directly below , and is directly below .
We can obtain a volume of by taking the vertices , and .
To compute the volume of , we will instead compute the volume of the parts of the cube that are not part of . This is just the three tetrahedrons , , and , which each have volume (by using the formula for the volume of a pyramid).
Therefore, the volume not contained in is , so the volume contained in is .