1990 AIME Problems/Problem 14
Problem
The rectangle below has dimensions
and
. Diagonals
and
intersect at
. If triangle
is cut out and removed, edges
and
are joined, and the figure is then creased along segments
and
, we obtain a triangular pyramid, all four of whose faces are isosceles triangles. Find the volume of this pyramid.
Solution
Our triangular pyramid has base . The area of this isosceles triangle is easy to find by
, where we can find
to be
by the Pythagorean Theorem. Thus
.
To find the volume, we want to use the equation , so we need to find the height of the tetrahedron. By the Pythagorean Theorem,
. If we let
be the center of a sphere with radius
, then
lie on the sphere. The cross section of the sphere is a circle, and the center of that circle is the foot of the perpendicular from the center of the sphere. Hence the foot of the height we want to find occurs at the circumcenter of
.
From here we just need to perform some brutish calculations. Using the formula (
being the circumradius), we find
. By the Pythagorean Theorem,
Finally, we substitute into the volume equation to find
.
See also
1990 AIME (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 13 |
Followed by Problem 15 | |
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 | ||
All AIME Problems and Solutions |