Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.0 AIME, harder Prove it Ireland

Find all right-angled triangles with integer side lengths whose areas are numerically equal to their perimeters.

Solution

Let a,b,ca, b, c be the side lengths of a right-angled triangle with hypotenuse cc, i.e. c2=a2+b2c^2 = a^2 + b^2. The area of this triangle is equal to ab/2ab/2 and the perimeter is a+b+ca + b + c. Area and perimeter agree exactly when ab/2=a+b+cab/2 = a + b + c. Squaring both sides and using Pythagoras, this becomes
a2+b2=(ab2(a+b))2=a2b24+(a+b)2ab(a+b). a^2 + b^2 = \left(\frac{ab}{2} - (a+b)\right)^2 = \frac{a^2b^2}{4} + (a+b)^2 - ab(a+b).
We simplify this to
0=a2b24+2abab(a+b)=ab(ab4+2(a+b)). 0 = \frac{a^2b^2}{4} + 2ab - ab(a+b) = ab\left(\frac{ab}{4} + 2 - (a+b)\right).
Because aa and bb are positive, we obtain ab+84a4b=0ab + 8 - 4a - 4b = 0, which is equivalent to
(a4)(b4)=8.(a - 4)(b - 4) = 8.
We may assume, w.l.o.g., that 1ab1 \le a \le b. If b4b \le 4, then both factors, a4a - 4 and b4b - 4, are between 0 and 3-3. The product of two such integers is never equal to 8. Hence, b5b \ge 5, which implies that b4b - 4 is positive. Therefore, a4a - 4 must be positive as well, hence 5ab5 \le a \le b.
The only factorisations of 8 in positive integers are 8=188 = 1 \cdot 8 and 8=248 = 2 \cdot 4. We obtain (a,b)=(5,12)(a, b) = (5, 12) in the first case, and (a,b)=(6,8)(a, b) = (6, 8) in the second case. These lead to the right-angled triangles with side lengths 5, 12, 13 and 6, 8, 10. A straightforward check reveals that these are indeed solutions to this problem.

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