Maths Olympiad Prep

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, 2021

Geometry Difficulty 5.0 AIME Prove it United States

Problem:
Two circles with radii 7171 and 100100 are externally tangent. Compute the largest possible area of a right triangle whose vertices are each on at least one of the circles.

Solution

Solution:
Figure 1
In general, let the radii of the circles be r<Rr < R, and let OO be the center of the larger circle. If both endpoints of the hypotenuse are on the same circle, the largest area occurs when the hypotenuse is a diameter of the larger circle, with [ABC]=R2[ABC] = R^2.

If the endpoints of the hypotenuse are on different circles (as in the diagram above), then the distance from OO to ABAB is half the distance from CC to ABAB. Thus
[ABC]=2[AOB]=AOOBsinAOB [ABC] = 2[ AOB ] = AO \cdot OB \sin \angle AOB
AOOBAO \cdot OB and sinAOB\sin \angle AOB are simultaneously maximized when AOOB=(2r+R)RAO \cdot OB = (2r + R) \cdot R and mAOB=90m \angle AOB = 90^{\circ}, so the answer is R2+2Rr=24200R^2 + 2 R r = 24200.

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