Shown in the figure above is a unit regular pentagon. It is divided into two halves by a vertical line that passes through the midpoint of the base (point ), which is the origin of the coordinate system. Find the coordinates of the centroid of the right half of the pentagon (shaded), and report the value of .
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We have the following coordinates for points B , C , D :
B = ( 2 1 , 0 )
C = ( 2 1 + cos 7 2 ∘ , sin 7 2 ∘ )
D = ( 0 , sin 7 2 ∘ + sin 7 2 ∘ + 1 8 0 ∘ − 1 0 8 ∘ ) = ( 0 , sin 7 2 ∘ + sin 3 6 ∘ )
We'll segment the area of half the pentagon into two triangles, △ O B C and △ O C D ,
The centroid of △ O B C is given by
G 1 = ( 3 1 ) ( O + B + C )
And, the centroid of △ O C D is given by
G 2 = ( 3 1 ) ( O + C + D )
The overall centroid is given by
G = [ O B C ] + [ O C D ] [ O B C ] G 1 + [ O C D ] G 2
where, [ O B C ] is the area of △ O B C . [ O B C ] = 2 1 B x C y , and [ O C D ] is the area of △ O C D . [ O C D ] = 2 1 C x D y
Crunching the numbers above, we get G x = 0 . 3 1 5 7 3 7 8 6 5 , G y = 0 . 6 8 8 1 9 0 9 6 , so that 3 G x + 4 G y = 3 . 6 9 9 9 7 7 4 3 6 ≈ 3 . 7