Four identical circles are inscribed into a web of four triangles inside an equilateral triangle with side length 1, as shown in the diagram. Find the radius of the circles to 3 decimal places.
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From symmetry, the internal triangle equilateral. Let’s for now set the side of it B C = 1 . The radius of the inscribed circle will be R = 2 3 1 .
The three triangles on the outside are all congruent. We will get an expression for the radius R of the inscribed circle from R × s = A where s is half perimeter and A is area.
We can introduce x = A B = C D . This will give us the area as A = 2 1 x ( 1 + x ) × s i n ( 1 2 0 ∘ ) = 4 3 x ( x + 1 ) .
To get circumference we need y , which can be obtained from the law of cosines as y = x 2 + ( 1 + x ) 2 − 2 1 x ( x + 1 ) × c o s ( 1 2 0 ∘ ) .
R × s = A will now become 3 1 × ( x + ( x + 1 ) + y ) = 4 3 x ( x + 1 )
This has only one applicable solution, namely x = 0 . 9 3 0 4 3 , which corresponds to y = A D = 2 . 5 2 7 5 .
We were supposed to have y = 1 , so all the results need to be scaled down to that, with the radius becoming R = 2 3 1 × y 1 = 0 . 1 1 4 2