2020 AMC 8 Problems/Problem 24
Contents
Problem 24
A large square region is paved with gray square tiles, each measuring
inches on a side. A border
inches wide surrounds each tile. The figure below shows the case for
. When
, the
gray tiles cover
of the area of the large square region. What is the ratio
for this larger value of
Solution 1
The area of the shaded region is . To find the area of the large square, we note that there is a
-inch border between each of the
pairs of consecutive squares, as well as from between first/last squares and the large square, for a total of
times the length of the border, i.e.
. Adding this to the total length of the consecutive squares, which is
, the side length of the large square is
, yielding the equation
. Taking the square root of both sides (and using the fact that lengths are non-negative) gives
, and cross-multiplying now gives
.
Note: Once we obtain to ease computation, we may take the reciprocal of both sides to yield
so
Multiplying both sides by
yields the same answer as before. ~peace09
Solution 2
Without loss of generality, we may let (since
will be determined by the scale of
, and we are only interested in the ratio
). Then, as the total area of the
gray tiles is simply
, the large square has area
, making the side of the large square
. As in Solution 1, the side length of the large square consists of the total length of the gray tiles and
lots of the border, so the length of the border is
. Since
if
, the answer is
.
Solution 3 (using answer choices)
As in Solution 2, we let without loss of generality. For sufficiently large
, we can approximate the percentage of the area covered by the gray tiles by subdividing most of the region into congruent squares, as shown:
Each red square has side length
, so by solving
, we obtain
. The actual fraction of the total area covered by the gray tiles will be slightly less than
, which implies
. Hence
(and thus
, since we are assuming
) is less than
, and the only choice that satisfies this is
.
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See also
2020 AMC 8 (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 23 |
Followed by Problem 25 | |
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 | ||
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