Blue or Red

Geometry Level 2

The figure shows a right angle at F F inside a regular pentagon. Which triangle has a greater area?

Red Neither Blue

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2 solutions

Chew-Seong Cheong
Oct 21, 2020

Since no one provides a solution, I am submitting one. I was thinking of submitting a simple graphical solution but I couldn't find one.

Let the side length of the pentagon be 1 1 and D F = D G = a DF=DG=a . Then the ratio of areas of the two triangle is given by:

A b l u e A r e d = 1 2 ( 1 a ) sin 10 8 1 2 a a sin 10 8 = 1 a a 2 \frac {A_{\blue{\rm blue}}}{A_{\rm \red{red}}} = \frac {\frac 12\cdot (1-a) \sin 108^\circ}{\frac 12 \cdot a \cdot a \sin 108^\circ} = \frac {1-a}{a^2}

To find a a , we note that D F G \triangle DFG and D E H \triangle DEH are similar. Therefore a 1 = F G E H = 1 2 cos 3 6 = 1 φ \dfrac a1 = \dfrac {FG}{EH} = 1{2\cos 36^\circ} = \dfrac 1 \varphi , where φ = 1 + 5 2 \varphi = \dfrac {1+\sqrt 5}2 is the golden ratio . Then we have:

A b l u e A r e d = 1 a a 2 = φ 2 ( 1 1 φ ) = φ 2 φ = φ + 1 φ = 1 \frac {A_{\blue{\rm blue}}}{A_{\rm \red{red}}} = \frac {1-a}{a^2} = \varphi^2\left(1-\frac 1\varphi \right) = \varphi^2 - \varphi = \varphi + 1 - \varphi = 1 A b l u e = A r e d \implies A_{\rm \blue{blue}} = A_{\rm \red{red}}

Ans: Neither

Jon Haussmann
Oct 22, 2020

Here is a geometric solution.

Draw the line through D D parallel to side A B AB . Let this line intersect line A E AE at H H . It is easy to compute that H A F = D A F = 1 8 \angle HAF = \angle DAF = 18^\circ and H D F = A D F = 3 6 \angle HDF = \angle ADF = 36^\circ , so F F is the incenter of triangle A D H ADH . This means F F is equidistant to lines A H AH and D H DH .

In triangles A E F AEF and D F G DFG , bases A E AE and F G FG have the same length. ( A F G B AFGB is a rectangle, so F G = A B = A E FG = AB = AE .) And from our observation above, the height from F F to A E AE is equal to the height from D D to F G FG . Therefore, triangles A E F AEF and D F G DFG have the same area.

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