Disorganized Pinwheel

Geometry Level pending

A quadrilateral has angles between its diagonals and sides as shown. Find the smaller of the two angles between the diagonals. If there are multiple solutions, report their average.

Note: Image not to scale.


The answer is 55.

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1 solution

Marta Reece
Feb 5, 2017

Start labeling one of the unknown angles x x and expressing the rest of the unknown angles in terms of x x , as done in the figure above. Apply the law of sines to all the small triangles to get:

a s i n ( 30 ) = b s i n ( x ) \frac{a}{sin(30)}= \frac{b}{sin(x)}

a s i n ( 130 x ) = d s i n ( 20 ) \frac{a}{sin(130-x)}= \frac{d}{sin(20)}

c s i n ( 110 x ) = b s i n ( 40 ) \frac{c}{sin(110-x)}= \frac{b}{sin(40)}

c s i n ( 50 ) = d s i n ( x 20 ) \frac{c}{sin(50)}= \frac{d}{sin(x-20)}

Solve for b d \frac{b}{d} to get:

b d = s i n ( 130 x ) s i n ( 20 ) × s i n ( x ) s i n ( 30 ) = s i n ( 50 ) s i n ( x 20 ) × s i n ( 40 ) s i n ( 110 x ) \frac{b}{d}=\frac{sin(130-x)}{sin(20)}\times\frac{sin(x)}{sin(30)}= \frac{sin(50)}{sin(x-20)}\times\frac{sin(40)}{sin(110-x)}

Equation on the right has five solutions, but only two of those are positive. They are x = 3 0 x=30^\circ and x = 10 0 x=100^\circ . They correspond to acute angles between the diagonals of 6 0 60^\circ and 5 0 50^\circ .

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