Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /166 of 348

Geometry Difficulty 4.9 AIME Find the answer

Two diameters and one radius are drawn in a circle of radius 1, dividing the circle into 5 sectors. The largest possible area of the smallest sector can be expressed as abπ\frac{a}{b} \pi, where a,ba, b are relatively prime positive integers. Compute 100a+b100a+b.

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

Solution

Let the two diameters split the circle into four sectors of areas A,BA, B, AA, and BB, where A+B=π2A+B=\frac{\pi}{2}. Without loss of generality, let ABA \leq B. If our radius cuts into a sector of area AA, the area of the smallest sector will be of the form min(x,Ax)\min (x, A-x). Note that min(Ax,x)A2π8\min (A-x, x) \leq \frac{A}{2} \leq \frac{\pi}{8}. If our radius cuts into a sector of area BB, then the area of the smallest sector will be of the form min(A,x,Bx)min(A,B2)=min(A,π4A2)\min (A, x, B-x) \leq \min \left(A, \frac{B}{2}\right)=\min \left(A, \frac{\pi}{4}-\frac{A}{2}\right). This equals AA if Aπ6A \leq \frac{\pi}{6} and it equals π4A2\frac{\pi}{4}-\frac{A}{2} if Aπ6A \geq \frac{\pi}{6}. This implies that the area of the smallest sector is maximized when A=π6A=\frac{\pi}{6}, and we get an area of π6\frac{\pi}{6}.

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.