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.
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Start labeling one of the unknown angles x and expressing the rest of the unknown angles in terms of x , as done in the figure above. Apply the law of sines to all the small triangles to get:
s i n ( 3 0 ) a = s i n ( x ) b
s i n ( 1 3 0 − x ) a = s i n ( 2 0 ) d
s i n ( 1 1 0 − x ) c = s i n ( 4 0 ) b
s i n ( 5 0 ) c = s i n ( x − 2 0 ) d
Solve for d b to get:
d b = s i n ( 2 0 ) s i n ( 1 3 0 − x ) × s i n ( 3 0 ) s i n ( x ) = s i n ( x − 2 0 ) s i n ( 5 0 ) × s i n ( 1 1 0 − x ) s i n ( 4 0 )
Equation on the right has five solutions, but only two of those are positive. They are x = 3 0 ∘ and x = 1 0 0 ∘ . They correspond to acute angles between the diagonals of 6 0 ∘ and 5 0 ∘ .