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Geometry Difficulty 4.0 AMC 10/12 Prove it Japan

We can make a cube by connecting every two centroids on neighboring faces of a regular octahedron. How many times is the cube as large as the octahedron?

Solution

Consider a regular octahedron AA-BCDEBCDE-FF. Denote by π1\pi_1, π2\pi_2 and π3\pi_3 the planes passing through the diagonals BDBD and CECE, the diagonals CECE and AFAF, and the diagonals BDBD and EFEF, respectively.
By symmetry, π1\pi_1, π2\pi_2 and π3\pi_3 divide the octahedron into 8 equal parts. The octahedron is divided into 8 triangular pyramids, and the cube is divided into 8 small cubes. The ratio of the volume of the small cube and the triangular pyramid is equal to that of the original cube and the octahedron. We will calculate the volume ratio of the small cube and the triangular pyramid.

Call OO the intersection of the 3 diagonals. Consider the triangular pyramid OABCOABC and the cube in it. AOB\angle AOB, BOC\angle BOC and COA\angle COA are right angles. Let MM be the midpoint of BCBC and let GG be the centroid of the triangle ABCABC. Then OO and GG are vertices of the small cube.

Since the centroid of a triangle divides a median in the ratio 2:12 : 1, AA is three times as high as GG is from the plane OBCOBC. Let OA=xOA = x. The length of the edges of the small cube is 13x\frac{1}{3}x and so its volume is 127x3\frac{1}{27}x^3. The volume of the triangular pyramid is 13x12x2=16x3\frac{1}{3} \cdot x \cdot \frac{1}{2}x^2 = \frac{1}{6}x^3. Thus, the ratio of the volume of the small cube and that of the triangular pyramid is 127x3÷16x3=29\frac{1}{27}x^3 \div \frac{1}{6}x^3 = \frac{2}{9}.

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