Competition problem — Geometry — Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 3.5 AMC 10/12 Find the answer

Line segment $\overline{AB}$ is a diameter of a circle with $AB = 24$ . Point $C$ , not equal to $A$ or $B$ , lies on the circle. As point $C$ moves around the circle, the centroid (center of mass) of $\triangle ABC$ traces out a closed curve missing two points. To the nearest positive integer, what is the area of the region bounded by this curve?

Pick one

Solution

For each $\triangle ABC,$ note that the length of one median is $OC=12.$ Let $G$ be the centroid of $\triangle ABC.$ It follows that $OG=\frac13 OC=4.$
As shown below, $\triangle ABC_1$ and $\triangle ABC_2$ are two shapes of $\triangle ABC$ with centroids $G_1$ and $G_2,$ respectively:

Therefore, point $G$ traces out a circle (missing two points) with the center $O$ and the radius $\overline{OG},$ as indicated in red. To the nearest positive integer, the area of the region bounded by the red curve is $\pi\cdot OG^2=16\pi\approx\boxed{\textbf{(C) } 50}.$
~MRENTHUSIASM

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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.