Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 4.9 AIME Find the answer

Now a ball is launched from a vertex of an equilateral triangle with side length 5. It strikes the opposite side after traveling a distance of 19\sqrt{19}. How many times does the ball bounce before it returns to a vertex? (The final contact with a vertex does not count as a bounce.)

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

Solution

The key idea is that, instead of reflecting the line AYAY off of BCBC, we will reflect ABCABC about BCBC and extend AYAY beyond ABC\triangle ABC. We keep doing this until the extension of AYAY hits a vertex of one of our reflected triangles. This is illustrated in the diagram below: We can calculate that the line AYAY has slope 33272=337\frac{\frac{3 \sqrt{3}}{2}}{\frac{7}{2}}=\frac{3 \sqrt{3}}{7}, so that (as indicated in the diagram), AYAY first intersects a vertex at the point (352,1532)2\left(\frac{35}{2}, \frac{15 \sqrt{3}}{2}\right)^{2}. To get there, it has to travel through 2 horizontal lines, 1 upward sloping line, and 4 downward sloping lines, so it bounces 2+1+4=72+1+4=7 times total.

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