Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 4.7 AIME Find the answer Italy

Problem:

Let ABCDEFABCDEF be a regular hexagon of area 11. Consider all the triangles whose vertices belong to the set {A,B,C,D,E,F}\{A, B, C, D, E, F\}: what is the sum of their areas?

Pick one

Solution

Solution:

The answer is (D). Let us consider all the non-degenerate triangles whose vertices are also vertices of the hexagon, distinguishing them into 3 types:

Three consecutive vertices. There are 66 triangles of this type (one for each vertex), and the area of each is equal to 1/61/6 of that of the hexagon (see figure).

One vertex every two. There are two triangles of this type, and their area is equal to that of the hexagon minus the area of three small triangles of the first type, that is 1/21/2.

Two adjacent vertices and one not. In this case we have 1212 possible triangles, two for each side (once a side is fixed we have two vertices on the opposite side to choose from), and the area of each is equal to 1/31/3 (half the area of the hexagon minus

Figure 1

the area of a triangle of the first type).

The sum of the areas of these triangles is therefore
616+212+1213=6. 6 \cdot \frac{1}{6} + 2 \cdot \frac{1}{2} + 12 \cdot \frac{1}{3} = 6.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from it; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.