Problem:
Four spheres, each of radius , lie inside a regular tetrahedron with side length such that each sphere is tangent to three faces of the tetrahedron and to the other three spheres. Find .
Problem:
Four spheres, each of radius , lie inside a regular tetrahedron with side length such that each sphere is tangent to three faces of the tetrahedron and to the other three spheres. Find .
Solution:
Let be the center of the sphere that is tangent to the faces , , and . Let be the feet of the perpendiculars from to and respectively. Let be the foot of the perpendicular from to . Then, is a quadrilateral such that , are right angles and . Also, is the dihedral angle between faces and , so . We can then compute , so . Hence, , so .