Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.0 AIME Prove it United States

Problem:

Four spheres, each of radius rr, lie inside a regular tetrahedron with side length 11 such that each sphere is tangent to three faces of the tetrahedron and to the other three spheres. Find rr.

Solution

Solution:

Let OO be the center of the sphere that is tangent to the faces ABCABC, ABDABD, and BCDBCD. Let P,QP, Q be the feet of the perpendiculars from OO to ABCABC and ABDABD respectively. Let RR be the foot of the perpendicular from PP to ABAB. Then, OPRQOPRQ is a quadrilateral such that P\angle P, Q\angle Q are right angles and OP=OQ=rOP = OQ = r. Also, R\angle R is the dihedral angle between faces ABCABC and ABDABD, so cosR=1/3\cos \angle R = 1/3. We can then compute QR=2rQR = \sqrt{2} r, so BR=6rBR = \sqrt{6} r. Hence, 1=AB=2(6r)+2r=2r(6+1)1 = AB = 2(\sqrt{6} r) + 2r = 2r(\sqrt{6} + 1), so r=(61)/10r = (\sqrt{6} - 1)/10.

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