Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 3.2 AMC 10/12 Find the answer

What is the radius of a circle inscribed in a rhombus with diagonals of length 1010 and 2424?

Pick one

Solution

Let d1=10d_1=10 and d2=24d_2=24 be the lengths of the diagonals, aa the side, and rr the radius of the inscribed circle.
Using Pythagorean theorem we can compute a=(d1/2)2+(d2/2)2=13a=\sqrt{ (d_1/2)^2 + (d_2/2)^2 }=13.
We can now express the area of the rhombus in two different ways: as d1d2/2d_1 d_2 / 2, and as 2ar2ar. Solving d1d2/2=2ard_1 d_2 / 2 = 2ar for rr we get r=6013r=\boxed{\frac{60}{13}}.
(The first formula computes the area as one half of the circumscribed rectangle whose sides are parallel to the diagonals. The second one comes from the fact that we can divide the rhombus into 44 equal triangles, and in those the height on the side aa is equal to rr. See pictures below.)

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.