Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.2 AIME, harder Find the answer

Let ABCDA B C D be a tetrahedron such that its circumscribed sphere of radius RR and its inscribed sphere of radius rr are concentric. Given that AB=AC=1BCA B=A C=1 \leq B C and R=4rR=4 r, find BC2B C^{2}.

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

Let OO be the common center of the two spheres. Projecting OO onto each face of the tetrahedron will divide it into three isosceles triangles. Unfolding the tetrahedron into its net, the reflection of any of these triangles about a side of the tetrahedron will coincide with another one of these triangles. Using this property, we can see that each of the faces is broken up into the same three triangles. It follows that the tetrahedron is isosceles, i.e. AB=CD,AC=BDA B=C D, A C=B D, and AD=BCA D=B C. Let PP be the projection of OO onto ABCA B C and x=BCx=B C. By the Pythagorean Theorem on triangle POAP O A, PP has distance R2r2=r15\sqrt{R^{2}-r^{2}}=r \sqrt{15} from A,BA, B, and CC. Using the area-circumcenter formula, we compute [ABC]=ABACBC4PA=x4r15[A B C]=\frac{A B \cdot A C \cdot B C}{4 P A}=\frac{x}{4 r \sqrt{15}}. However, by breaking up the volume of the tetrahedron into the four tetrahedra OABC,OABDO A B C, O A B D, OACD,OBCDO A C D, O B C D, we can write [ABC]=V43r[A B C]=\frac{V}{\frac{4}{3} r}, where V=[ABCD]V=[A B C D]. Comparing these two expressions for [ABC][A B C], we get x=315 Vx=3 \sqrt{15} \mathrm{~V}. Using the formula for the volume of an isosceles tetrahedron (or some manual calculations), we can compute V=x2172(2x2)V=x^{2} \sqrt{\frac{1}{72}\left(2-x^{2}\right)}. Substituting into the previous equation (and taking the solution which is 1\geq 1 ), we eventually get x2=1+715x^{2}=1+\sqrt{\frac{7}{15}}.

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