Pentacular

Geometry Level 3

Let the point inside a regular pentagon A B C D E ABCDE where the lines segments A D AD and C E CE intersect be F F .

If the pentagon has side length 50 50 , find the floor of the length of B F BF (the red \color{#D61F06}{\text{red}} line).

Created by Michael Fuller . Popular geometry problems: "Star Stumper" , "Not your average shuriken"


The answer is 58.

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

3 solutions

Maggie Miller
Aug 2, 2015

By the law of cosines, B F 2 = 5 0 2 + 5 0 2 2 5 0 2 cos ( 2 π 5 ) \overline{BF}^2=50^2+50^2-2\cdot50^2\cos\left(\frac{2\pi}{5}\right) .

That is, B F 58.8 \overline{BF}\approx58.8 , so the answer is 58 \boxed{58} .

Anuj Doshi
Aug 3, 2015

If the picture doesnt load http://postimg.org/image/5tm9a6nwf/

Kenny Lau
Aug 5, 2015

Area of triangle ABC = (1/2) BC x AB x sin(108 degree)

Area of triangle BCF = (1/2) BC x BF x sin(54 degree)

Observe that both triangle, when duplicated, form the rhombus ABCF.

Therefore, their areas are equal.

AB sin(108 degree) = BF sin(54 degree)

50 sin(108 degree) = BF sin(54 degree)

BF = 50 sin(108 degree) / sin(54 degree) = 100 cos(54 degree)

The result follows from putting it in a calculator.

The last step can be ignored if the double-angle formula is unknown.

So why not 59 to nearest integer?

Carol Blyth - 5 years, 10 months ago

Log in to reply

The \left\lfloor\quad \right\rfloor brackets denote the floor function which looks for the greatest integer less than or equal to F B \overline { FB } , not the nearest integer.

Michael Fuller - 5 years, 10 months ago

Log in to reply

Thanks ... very clear

Carol Blyth - 5 years, 10 months ago

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...