2013 AIME I Problems/Problem 13
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[hide]Problem
Triangle has side lengths , , and . For each positive integer , points and are located on and , respectively, creating three similar triangles . The area of the union of all triangles for can be expressed as , where and are relatively prime positive integers. Find .
Solution 1
Note that every is parallel to each other for any nonnegative . Also, the area we seek is simply the ratio , because it repeats in smaller and smaller units. Note that the area of the triangle, by Heron's formula, is 90.
For ease, all ratios I will use to solve this problem are with respect to the area of . For example, if I say some area has ratio , that means its area is 45.
Now note that 1 minus ratio of minus ratio . We see by similar triangles given that ratio is . Ratio is , after seeing that , . Now it suffices to find 90 times ratio , which is given by 1 minus the two aforementioned ratios. Substituting these ratios to find and clearing out the , we see that the answer is , which gives .
Solution 2
Using Heron's Formula we can get the area of the triangle .
Since then the scale factor for the dimensions of to is
Therefore, the area of is . Also, the dimensions of the other sides of the can be easily computed: and . This allows us to compute one side of the triangle , . Therefore, the scale factor to is , which yields the length of as . Therefore, the scale factor for to is . Some more algebraic manipulation will show that to is still . Also, since the triangles are disjoint, the area of the union is the sum of the areas. Therefore, the area is the geometric series At this point, it may be wise to "simplify" . So the geometric series converges to . Using the difference of squares, we get , which simplifies to . Cancelling all common factors, we get the reduced fraction . So , yielding the answer .
Solution 3
For this problem, the key is to find the .
The area of the biggest triangle is according to the Heron's formula easily
Firstly, we discuss the ratio of
Since the problem said that two triangles are similar, so ,
Getting that , which is not hard to find that , Since ,
we can find the ratio of , the common ratio between two similar triangles is , the similar triangles means two consecutive
Now the whole summation of
The desired answer is Which our answer is
~bluesoul
Solution 4
Let be the coefficient of the similarity of triangles Then area
The height of triangles and from is the same
The coefficient of the similarity of triangles is
Analogically the coefficient of the similarity of triangles is and so on.
The yellow area is
The required area is
The number is prime, is integer but not therefore the answer is .
vladimir.shelomovskii@gmail.com, vvsss
Video Solution
https://youtu.be/IdM24SLrxQw?si=mu5fQ-_rFZM4ud2_
~MathProblemSolvingSkills.com
Video Solution by mop 2024
~r00tsOfUnity
See also
2013 AIME I (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 12 |
Followed by Problem 14 | |
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 | ||
All AIME Problems and Solutions |
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