A pentagon and an inscribed square

Geometry Level 3

A B C D E ABCDE is a regular pentagon of side length a a . I J K L IJKL is a square of side length b b that is inscribed in the pentagon as shown in the figure above, with I J IJ parallel to B C BC . If the ratio of b b to a a is r r , then find 1 0 5 r \lfloor 10^5 r \rfloor .


The answer is 106049.

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

1 solution

For simplicity, let a = 1 a=1 . Then, the length of all diagonals of the regular pentagon is the golden ratio φ = 1 + 5 2 \varphi =\frac{1+\sqrt{5}}{2} . If we extend the sides A B AB and D C DC of the pentagon, a golden triangle is formed, N B C \triangle NBC .
The length of the base of this triangle is B C = 1 BC=1 , hence its other two sides have length N B = N C = φ NB=NC=\varphi .

E N EN is an axis of symmetry of the compound shape, thus, M M is the midpoint of B C BC and M = 90 \angle M=90{}^\circ .
By Pythagorean theorem, on E M B \triangle EMB and N M B \triangle NMB , we get E M = N M = φ 2 1 4 EM=NM=\sqrt{{{\varphi }^{2}}-\frac{1}{4}} E N = 2 φ 2 1 4 = 4 φ 2 1 \Rightarrow EN=2\sqrt{{{\varphi }^{2}}-\frac{1}{4}}=\sqrt{4{{\varphi }^{2}}-1} Finally, triangles E L K \triangle ELK and E A D \triangle EAD are similar, as well as A L I \triangle ALI and A E N \triangle AEN , hence,

b φ = L K A D = E L E A = E A A L E A = 1 A L E A = 1 b E N = 1 b 4 φ 2 1 b φ + b 4 φ 2 1 = 1 b = 1 1 φ + 1 4 φ 2 1 b 1.0604974 \begin{aligned} & \frac{b}{\varphi }=\frac{LK}{AD}=\frac{EL}{EA}=\frac{EA-AL}{EA}=1-\frac{AL}{EA}=1-\frac{b}{EN}=1-\frac{b}{\sqrt{4{{\varphi }^{2}}-1}} \\ & \Rightarrow \frac{b}{\varphi }+\frac{b}{\sqrt{4{{\varphi }^{2}}-1}}=1 \\ & \Rightarrow b=\frac{1}{\frac{1}{\varphi }+\frac{1}{\sqrt{4{{\varphi }^{2}}-1}}} \\ & \Rightarrow b\approx 1.0604974 \\ \end{aligned} For the answer,
10 5 r = 10 5 b 1 = 106049 . \left\lfloor {{10}^{5}}r \right\rfloor =\left\lfloor {{10}^{5}}\frac{b}{1} \right\rfloor =\boxed{106049}.

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...