Difference between revisions of "2009 AMC 12A Problems/Problem 8"

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{{duplicate|[[2009 AMC 12A Problems|2009 AMC 12A #8]] and [[2009 AMC 10A Problems|2009 AMC 10A #14]]}}
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== Problem ==
 
== Problem ==
 
Four congruent rectangles are placed as shown. The area of the outer square is <math>4</math> times that of the inner square. What is the ratio of the length of the longer side of each rectangle to the length of its shorter side?
 
Four congruent rectangles are placed as shown. The area of the outer square is <math>4</math> times that of the inner square. What is the ratio of the length of the longer side of each rectangle to the length of its shorter side?

Revision as of 08:54, 13 February 2009

The following problem is from both the 2009 AMC 12A #8 and 2009 AMC 10A #14, so both problems redirect to this page.

Problem

Four congruent rectangles are placed as shown. The area of the outer square is $4$ times that of the inner square. What is the ratio of the length of the longer side of each rectangle to the length of its shorter side?

[asy] unitsize(6mm); defaultpen(linewidth(.8pt));  path p=(1,1)--(-2,1)--(-2,2)--(1,2); draw(p); draw(rotate(90)*p); draw(rotate(180)*p); draw(rotate(270)*p); [/asy]

$\textbf{(A)}\ 3 \qquad \textbf{(B)}\ \sqrt {10} \qquad \textbf{(C)}\ 2 + \sqrt2 \qquad \textbf{(D)}\ 2\sqrt3 \qquad \textbf{(E)}\ 4$

Solution

The area of the outer square is $4$ times that of the inner square. Therefore the side of the outer square is $\sqrt 4 = 2$ times that of the inner square.

Then the shorter side of the rectangle is $1/4$ of the side of the outer square, and the longer side of the rectangle is $3/4$ of the side of the outer square, hence their ratio is $\boxed{3}$.

See Also

2009 AMC 12A (ProblemsAnswer KeyResources)
Preceded by
Problem 7
Followed by
Problem 9
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