One Well That Ends Well

Geometry Level 4

A landlord is surveying his square field that has a well of square area of 1 × 1 m 2 1\times 1 \text{ m}^2 situated somewhere, and its sides are parallel to those of the field, as shown above.

After measuring the landscape, the landlord designs 4 different diagrams to keep his cattle within the (brown) rectangular areas, involving the well, and the L-shaped (yellow) areas will have different number of areas in m 2 \text m^2 and will be used for farming, as depicted above.

What is the original green area in m 2 \text m^2 ?


The answer is 120.

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3 solutions

Marta Reece
Apr 14, 2017

If you add all the yellow areas in the original problem together, you will have every orange part of the image above three times, every yellow part two times, and the blue part not at all. So if you take the side of the square as x x , you can describe the coverage as

3 x 2 x x 1 = 65 + 93 + 81 + 101 = 340 3x^2-x-x-1=65+93+81+101=340

This equation has two solutions: x = 11 , x = 31 3 x=11, x=-\frac{31}{3}

Only the first is applicable, and the green area is 1 1 2 1 = 120 11^2-1=120

A solution with x = 11 x=11 actually exists and it is pictured below.

Ahmad Saad
Apr 24, 2017

If we take the four brown rectangles to overlap within the original square, then the red rectangles will be overlapped twice while the inside deep blue square will be overlapped four times. If the side length is x x , the area above will equal to x 2 + 2 x + 1 x^2 + 2x +1 .

Then we will obtain the equation:

( x 2 63 ) + ( x 2 93 ) + ( x 2 81 ) + ( x 2 101 ) = x 2 + 2 x + 1 (x^2-63) + (x^2-93) + (x^2-81)+ (x^2-101) = x^2 + 2x +1

3 x 2 2 x 341 = 0 3x^2 - 2x - 341 = 0

( 3 x + 31 ) ( x 11 ) = 0 (3x+31)(x-11) = 0

Thus, x = 11 x=11 , and the green area = 1 1 2 1 = 120 11^2 - 1 = \boxed{120} .

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