1957 AHSME Problems/Problem 35
Problem
Side of right triangle is divided into equal parts. Seven line segments parallel to are drawn to from the points of division. If , then the sum of the lengths of the seven line segments:
Solution
Because the location of the right angle within the triangle is not specified, answer choice (A) may be tempting. However, as we will come to see later, this ambiguity is irrelevant to the problem. Because we have a series of parallel lines, we have many smaller triangles which are similar to the larger triangle. Because the smallest triangle at the top has its base of the way along , its base must be of that of the larger triangle, so it must have length . We can repeat this for each of the seven segments and thus find our desired sum (by using the formula for triangular numbers):
See Also
1957 AHSC (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 34 |
Followed by Problem 36 | |
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