Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 4.8 AIME Prove it United States

Problem:

In the plane, what is the length of the shortest path from (2,0)(-2,0) to (2,0)(2,0) that avoids the interior of the unit circle (i.e., circle of radius 11) centered at the origin?

Solution

Solution:

The path goes in a line segment tangent to the circle, then an arc of the circle, then another line segment tangent to the circle. Since one of these tangent lines and a radius of the circle give two legs of a right triangle with hypotenuse the line from (0,0)(0,0) to (2,0)(-2,0) or (2,0)(2,0), the length of each tangent line is 2212=3\sqrt{2^{2}-1^{2}}=\sqrt{3}. Also, because these are 30609030^{\circ}-60^{\circ}-90^{\circ} right triangles, the angle of the arc is 6060^{\circ} and has length π/3\pi / 3.

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