Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.3 AIME, harder Prove it Soviet Union

Problem:

Given a regular tetrahedron ABCDABCD, prove that it is contained in the three spheres on diameters ABAB, BCBC and ADAD. Is this true for any tetrahedron?

Solution

Solution:

Let the tetrahedron have side 11. Then the center OO is a distance 1/81 / \sqrt{8} from the center of each of the spheres, so it is contained in each of the spheres. We now use convexity.

Two circles with diameters two of the sides of a triangle cover the triangle (consider the foot of the altitude to the third side), so faces ABCABC and ABDABD are certainly contained in the spheres. Consider face ACDACD. The sphere on BCBC passes through the midpoints of ACAC and CDCD, and through CC, so it contains the triangle formed by these three points (by convexity). But the rest of ACDACD is contained in the sphere on ADAD. Similarly for the face BCDBCD. Hence all the faces are contained in the spheres. But now take any point PP inside the tetrahedron. Extend OPOP to meet a face at XX. XX lies in one of the spheres, but OO also lies in the sphere and hence all points on OXOX, including PP (by convexity).

False in general. Take ABCDABCD to be a plane square, then no points on CDCD are in the spheres except CC and DD (and we can obviously distort this slightly to make it less degenerate).

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