2011 AMC 10B Problems/Problem 20

The following problem is from both the 2011 AMC 12B #16 and 2011 AMC 10B #20, so both problems redirect to this page.

Problem

Rhombus $ABCD$ has side length $2$ and $\angle B = 120$ °. Region $R$ consists of all points inside the rhombus that are closer to vertex $B$ than any of the other three vertices. What is the area of $R$ ?

$\textbf{(A)}\ \frac{\sqrt{3}}{3} \qquad\textbf{(B)}\ \frac{\sqrt{3}}{2} \qquad\textbf{(C)}\ \frac{2\sqrt{3}}{3} \qquad\textbf{(D)}\ 1 + \frac{\sqrt{3}}{3} \qquad\textbf{(E)}\ 2$

Solution

Suppose that $P$ is a point in the rhombus $ABCD$ and let $\ell_{BC}$ be the perpendicular bisector of $\overline{BC}$ . Then $PB < PC$ if and only if $P$ is on the same side of $\ell_{BC}$ as $B$ . The line $\ell_{BC}$ divides the plane into two half-planes; let $S_{BC}$ be the half-plane containing $B$ . Let us define similarly $\ell_{BD},S_{BD}$ and $\ell_{BA},S_{BA}$ . Then $R$ is equal to $ABCD \cap S_{BC} \cap S_{BD} \cap S_{BA}$ . The region turns out to be an irregular pentagon. We can make it easier to find the area of this region by dividing it into four triangles:

$[asy] unitsize(8mm); defaultpen(linewidth(0.8pt)+fontsize(10pt)); dotfactor=4; pair A=(4,0), B=(2,2sqrt(3)), C=(-2,2sqrt(3)), D=(0,0), E=(B+C)/2, F=(B+C+D)/3, G=(A+C)/2, H=(A+B+D)/3, I=(A+B)/2; fill((0,2sqrt(3))--B--(3,sqrt(3))--(2,(2sqrt(3))/3)--(0,(4sqrt(3))/3)--cycle,gray); draw(A--B--C--D--cycle); draw(D--(0,2sqrt(3))); draw(D--(3,sqrt(3))); draw(A--C); draw(F--B--H); draw(B--G); label("$A$",A,SE);label("$B$",B,NE);label("$C$",C,NW);label("$D$",D,SW); label("$E$",E,N);label("$F$",F,SW);label("$G$",G,SW);label("$H$",H,S);label("$I$",I,NE); label("$2$",(D--C),SW); [/asy]$ Since $\triangle BCD$ and $\triangle BAD$ are equilateral, $\ell_{BC}$ contains $D$ , $\ell_{BD}$ contains $A$ and $C$ , and $\ell_{BA}$ contains $D$ . Then $\triangle BEF \cong \triangle BGF \cong \triangle BGH \cong \triangle BIH$ with $BE = 1$ and $EF = \frac{1}{\sqrt{3}}$ so $[BEF] = \frac{1}{2}\cdot 1 \cdot \frac{\sqrt{3}}{3}$ . Multiply this by 4 and it turns out that the pentagon has area $\boxed{(C)\frac{2\sqrt{3}}{3}}$ .

Solution #2

We follow the steps shown above until we draw pentagon $BIHFE$ . We know that rhombus $ABCD$ can be divided into equilateral triangles $\triangle ABD$ and $\triangle CBD$ . Using the 30-60-90 triangle rules, we find the height of the equilateral triangles (and the height of the rhombus) to be $\sqrt{3}$ . Therefore, the area of $ABCD$ is $2\sqrt{3}$ . We now have to take off the areas $\triangle CDA$ , $\triangle CEF$ , and $\triangle AIH$ to get the desired shape. $\triangle CDA$ is just half of $ABCD$ $(\sqrt {3})$ and $\triangle AIH$ and $\triangle CEF$ are each $\frac{\sqrt {3}}{6}$ , for a total area of $2\sqrt {3}-\sqrt {3}-\frac{\sqrt{3}}{6}-\frac{\sqrt{3}}{6}=\boxed\boxed{(C)\frac{2\sqrt{3}}{3}}$ (Error compiling LaTeX. Unknown error_msg).

2011 AMC 10B (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 19	Followed by Problem 21
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All AMC 10 Problems and Solutions

2011 AMC 12B (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 15	Followed by Problem 17
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25
All AMC 12 Problems and Solutions

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2011 AMC 10B Problems/Problem 20

Contents

Problem

Solution

Solution #2

See Also