Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /590 of 860

Geometry Difficulty 5.3 AIME, harder Find the answer

An ant starts at the origin, facing in the positive xx-direction. Each second, it moves 1 unit forward, then turns counterclockwise by sin1(35)\sin ^{-1}\left(\frac{3}{5}\right) degrees. What is the least upper bound on the distance between the ant and the origin? (The least upper bound is the smallest real number rr that is at least as big as every distance that the ant ever is from the origin.)

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

Solution

We claim that the points the ant visits lie on a circle of radius 102\frac{\sqrt{10}}{2}. We show this by saying that the ant stays a constant distance 102\frac{\sqrt{10}}{2} from the point (12,32)\left(\frac{1}{2}, \frac{3}{2}\right). Suppose the ant moves on a plane PP. Consider a transformation of the plane PP^{\prime} such that after the first move, the ant is at the origin of PP^{\prime} and facing in the direction of the xx^{\prime} axis (on PP^{\prime} ). The transformation to get from PP to PP^{\prime} can be gotten by rotating PP about the origin counterclockwise through an angle sin1(35)\sin ^{-1}\left(\frac{3}{5}\right) and then translating it 1 unit to the right. Observe that the point (12,32)\left(\frac{1}{2}, \frac{3}{2}\right) is fixed under this transformation, which can be shown through the expression (12+32i)(45+35i)+1=12+32i\left(\frac{1}{2}+\frac{3}{2} i\right)\left(\frac{4}{5}+\frac{3}{5} i\right)+1=\frac{1}{2}+\frac{3}{2} i. It follows that at every point the ant stops, it will always be the same distance from (12,32)\left(\frac{1}{2}, \frac{3}{2}\right). Since it starts at (0,0)(0,0), this fixed distance is 102\frac{\sqrt{10}}{2}. Since sin1(35)\sin ^{-1}\left(\frac{3}{5}\right) is not a rational multiple of π\pi, the points the ant stops at form a dense subset of the circle in question. As a result, the least upper bound on the distance between the ant and the origin is the diameter of the circle, which is 10\sqrt{10}.

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.

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