Let be a convex quadrilateral, and let the midpoints of , , and be , , and . Let intersect at . If the area of is 15, find the sum of the infimum and the supremum areas of .
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We will create a bound for ∣ A B C D ∣ in terms of ∣ B K T L ∣ .
We will first find a lower bound.
By Midpoint Theorem, K L ∥ A C ∥ M N and K N ∥ B D ∥ L M . Thus, K L M N is a parallelogram and ∣ K L T ∣ = ∣ L M T ∣ = ∣ M N T ∣ = ∣ N T K ∣ = 4 1 ∣ K L M N ∣ . Also, since K and N are the midpoints of A B and D A , the length of the perpendicular dropped from A to K N is the same as the length of the perpendicular from a point on K N on to B D . The same applies for the other 3 points. Thus, ∣ A K N ∣ + ∣ B K L ∣ + ∣ C L M ∣ + ∣ D M N ∣ = ∣ K L M N ∣ , which implies ∣ K L T ∣ = 8 1 ∣ A B C D ∣ .
By similarity, we have ∣ B K L ∣ = 4 1 ∣ B C A ∣ . We also know that ∣ B C A ∣ < ∣ A B C D ∣ since the quadrilateral is convex and we also know that ∣ B C A ∣ + ϵ ≤ ∣ A B C D ∣ for any small ϵ > 0 . Thus, ∣ B K L ∣ < 4 1 ∣ A B C D ∣ .
From this, we get ∣ K L T ∣ + ∣ B K L ∣ < 8 1 ∣ A B C D ∣ + 4 1 ∣ A B C D ∣ , which implies 3 8 ∣ B K T L ∣ < ∣ A B C D ∣ . Note that this is the tightest lowest bound since the strictly less than case becomes less than or equal to for any sufficiently small ϵ > 0 . Thus, the infimum area of A B C D is 40.
We will now find an upper bound.
We have that ∣ B K L ∣ > 0 , and this is obviously the tightest bound since for any small ϵ > 0 , we have that we can construct a quadrilateral with that area. We also have that ∣ K L T ∣ = 8 1 ∣ A B C D ∣ . Thus, ∣ B K L ∣ + ∣ K L T ∣ > 8 1 ∣ A B C D ∣ , which implies 8 ∣ B K T L ∣ > ∣ A B C D ∣ , which we have shown to be the supremum. Thus, the supremum area of A B C D is 120.
Thus, the sum of the infimum and supremum areas of A B C D is 1 2 0 + 4 0 = 1 6 0 .