A Challenging Problem of Decahedron With 10 Congruent Right Kite Faces

Geometry Level 5

The diagram above shows a decahedron that has 10 congruent faces each as a right kite (i.e. a cyclic quadrilateral consisting of two congruent right triangles with common hypotenuse).

It has two pairs of unequal sides a , b a,b with a < b a<b .

And also has 12 vertices which exactly lie on a spherical surface with certain radius R R .

If b = 15 b=15 , then what is the value of radius R R ?


The answer is 11.21511586.

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1 solution

Ujjwal Rane
Apr 2, 2015

Imgur Imgur

It can be shown (see below) that the smallest angle in the kite is 51.827 and the kite plane is inclined at 48.03 degrees with the equatorial plane of the solid.

Thus the required radius, that is the distance of the pole (where five kites meet) and the center will be ( 15 cos 51.827 2 + 15 2 tan 51.827 2 sin 51.827 2 ) sin 48 = 11.2 (15 \cos \frac{51.827}{2} + \frac{15}{2} \tan \frac{51.827}{2} \sin \frac{51.827}{2}) \sin 48 = 11.2

Following is a solution to the rest of the geometry used above

Imgur Imgur

There could be better methods to do this, but here we will use simple high school trig.

Each Kite is a cyclic. So a circle passes through its vertices.

When we look along the axis of the solid, we will see two 'concentric' pentagons with a 36 degree relative rotation. Let the circumradius of these pentagons be 1. Hence side = 2 sin 36 2 \sin 36 Then the above circumcircle of the kite will be seen as an ellipse passing through the common center (axis), one vertex of one pentagon and two straddeling vertices of the other as shown. Clearly the minor axis of this ellipse is 1 and b = 1/2. If we take its equation to be x 2 a 2 + 4 y 2 = 1 \frac{x^2}{a^2}+4 y^2 = 1 we know two points on the ellipse (straddeling vertices of the pentagon) with x = sin 36 x = \sin 36 and y = cos 36 1 / 2 y = \cos 36 - 1/2 we can solve for a which is also the circumradius of the kite. a = 0.747674

The angle subtended by half the pentagon side is same as the angle we seek = arcsin ( sin 36 0.747674 ) = 51.827 = \arcsin(\frac{\sin 36}{0.747674}) = 51.827

Further, the inclination of the kite plane with the equatorial plane can be found to be arccos 0.5 0.747674 = 48.03 \arccos \frac{0.5}{0.747674} = 48.03

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