Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.4 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:

A rectangular piece of paper is folded along its diagonal (as depicted below) to form a non-convex pentagon that has an area of 710\frac{7}{10} of the area of the original rectangle. Find the ratio of the longer side of the rectangle to the shorter side of the rectangle.

Figure 1

Solution

Solution:

Figure 2

Given a polygon P1P2PkP_{1} P_{2} \cdots P_{k}, let [P1P2Pk]\left[P_{1} P_{2} \cdots P_{k}\right] denote its area. Let ABCDA B C D be the rectangle. Suppose we fold BB across AC\overline{A C}, and let EE be the intersection of AD\overline{A D} and BC\overline{B^{\prime} C}. Then we end up with the pentagon ACDEBA C D E B^{\prime}, depicted above. Let's suppose, without loss of generality, that ABCDA B C D has area 1. Then AEC\triangle A E C must have area 310\frac{3}{10}, since
{[ABCD]}=[ABC]+[ACD]=[ABC]+[ACD]=[ABE]+2[AEC]+[EDC]=[ACDEB]+[AEC]=710[ABCD]+[AEC], \begin{aligned} \{[A B C D] \} & =[A B C]+[A C D] \\ & =\left[A B^{\prime} C\right]+[A C D] \\ & =\left[A B^{\prime} E\right]+2[A E C]+[E D C] \\ & =\left[A C D E B^{\prime}\right]+[A E C] \\ & =\frac{7}{10}[A B C D]+[A E C], \end{aligned}
That is, [AEC]=310[ABCD]=310[A E C]=\frac{3}{10}[A B C D]=\frac{3}{10}.

Since ECD\triangle E C D is congruent to EAB\triangle E A B^{\prime}, both triangles have area 15\frac{1}{5}. Note that ABC\triangle A B^{\prime} C, ABC\triangle A B C, and CDA\triangle C D A are all congruent, and all have area 12\frac{1}{2}. Since AEC\triangle A E C and EDC\triangle E D C share altitude DC\overline{D C}, DEEA=[DEC][AEC]=23\frac{D E}{E A}=\frac{[D E C]}{[A E C]}=\frac{2}{3}. Because CAE\triangle C A E is isosceles, CE=EAC E=E A. Let AE=3xA E=3 x. Then CE=3xC E=3 x, DE=2xD E=2 x, and CD=x94=x5C D=x \sqrt{9-4}=x \sqrt{5}. Then ADDC=AE+EDDC=3+25=5\frac{A D}{D C}=\frac{A E+E D}{D C}=\frac{3+2}{\sqrt{5}}=\sqrt{5}.

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