Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 4.7 AIME Prove it United States

Problem:

In this fragment of a computer keyboard, the keys are congruent squares touching along their edges, and each letter refers to the point at the center of the corresponding key. Prove that triangles QAZQ A Z and ESZE S Z have the same area.

Figure 1

Solution

Solution:

Let us use measuring units in which the side length of each key is 11. We express the area of quadrilateral QAZEQ A Z E in two ways:

a. By dividing into triangles QAZQ A Z and QZEQ Z E. Since QZE\triangle Q Z E has base QE=2Q E = 2 and height 22, we get
Area QAZE=Area QAZ+1222=AreaQAZ+2 \text{Area } Q A Z E = \text{Area } Q A Z + \frac{1}{2} \cdot 2 \cdot 2 = \operatorname{Area} Q A Z + 2

b. By dividing to triangles ESZE S Z, QWAQ W A, WASW A S, WESW E S, and ASZA S Z. The four latter triangles all have base 11, height 11, and area 1/21/2, so
Area QAZE=Area ESZ+12+12+12+12=AreaESZ+2 \text{Area } Q A Z E = \text{Area } E S Z + \frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{2} = \operatorname{Area} E S Z + 2

Since quadrilateral QAZEQ A Z E must have the same area in both computations, we deduce that Area QAZ=Area ESZ\text{Area } Q A Z = \text{Area } E S Z.

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