Let be a regular tetrahedron, and let be the centroid of triangle . Consider the point on such that minimizes . Find .
Solution
We translate the problem into one about 2-D geometry. Consider the right triangle , and is some point on . Then, the choice of minimizes . Construct the line through but outside the triangle so that . For whichever chosen, let be the projection of onto , then . Then, since , it is equivalent to minimize . Observe that this sum is minimized when are collinear and the line through them is perpendicular to (so that is simply the distance from to ). Then, , and since as well, we see that are concyclic. Therefore, , and the sine of this angle is therefore .
Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track
puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.