Circle Stacking Sangaku

Geometry Level 4

In the ellipse, where the length of the major axis is 15 15 , and the length of the minor axis is 5 5 , we can position 9 9 identical circles along the major axis, such that only two circles each intersect the ellipse once.

Can we do better than that by decreasing the number of identical circles while increasing their areas?


Also try the sister problem I posted.

No. Yes.

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1 solution

Jason Gomez
Jan 22, 2021

The radius of curvature of the ellipse at the end point is 5 6 \frac{5}{6}

The radius of the circles if there are 8 of them will be 15 16 \frac{15}{16} which is greater than the radius of curvature of the ellipse and hence will bulge outside of the ellipse

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