Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.3 AIME, harder Find the answer

4. Given that the bases of two congruent regular pyramids are glued together, resulting in a hexahedron where all dihedral angles are equal, and the shortest edge of this hexahedron is 2, then the distance between the farthest two vertices is

A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.

Solution

3
4.【Analysis and Solution】As shown in the figure:
AED\angle A E D is the plane angle corresponding to the dihedral angle ABCDA-B C-D, BFD\angle B F D is the plane angle corresponding to the dihedral angle BACDB-A C-D. Then 2AED=BFD2 \angle A E D=\angle B F D, obviously AB<BCA B<B C so AB=2A B=2.
Let BC=2x,AE=4x2,ED=3xB C=2 x, A E=\sqrt{4-x^{2}}, E D=\sqrt{3} x,
thus cosAED=4x2+3x2424x23x\cos \angle A E D=\frac{4-x^{2}+3 x^{2}-4}{2 \sqrt{4-x^{2}} \sqrt{3 x}}.
Also, BF=4x2×2x2=x4x2B F=\sqrt{4-x^{2}} \times \frac{2 x}{2}=x \sqrt{4-x^{2}}, so sinBFD2=12BDBF=xx4x2\sin \frac{\angle B F D}{2}=\frac{\frac{1}{2} B D}{B F}=\frac{x}{x \sqrt{4-x^{2}}},
Given 2AED=BFD2 \angle A E D=\angle B F D, therefore
cos2AED+sin2BFD2=1\cos ^{2} \angle A E D+\sin ^{2} \frac{\angle B F D}{2}=1,
which means (4x2+3x2424x23x)+(xx4x2)2=1\left(\frac{4-x^{2}+3 x^{2}-4}{2 \sqrt{4-x^{2}} \sqrt{3} x}\right)+\left(\frac{x}{x \sqrt{4-x^{2}}}\right)^{2}=1,
Solving this, we get x=32,BC=3x=\frac{3}{2}, B C=3.

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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.