Four balls in the sketch above are all mutually tangent to one another. If the radii of the three larger balls are 69 , 46 , and 23 , what is the radius of the fourth ball?
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This involves an application of Descartes' theorem . From equation (2) in the link, noting that the curvature k of a circle of radius r is given by k = r 1 , and taking the positive root to find the curvature k 4 of the inscribed circle, we have that
k 4 = 6 9 1 + 4 6 1 + 2 3 1 + 2 6 9 ∗ 4 6 1 + 6 9 ∗ 2 3 1 + 4 6 ∗ 2 3 1 =
2 3 1 ∗ ( 3 1 + 2 1 + 1 ) + 2 3 2 6 1 + 3 1 + 2 1 = 2 3 1 ∗ 6 1 1 + 2 3 2 = 2 3 1 ∗ 6 2 3 = 6 1 .
Thus the radius of the fourth ball is k 4 1 = 6 .