Equilateral is inscribed in square with side length as shown above.
A regular tetrahedron is formed using .
If the volume of the regular tetrahedron can be expressed as , where and are coprime positive integers, find .
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.
a 2 + 1 = x 2 = 2 ( 1 − a ) 2 ⟹ a 2 + 1 = 2 − 4 a + 2 a 2 ⟹ a 2 − 4 a + 1 = 0 ⟹
a = 2 ± 3
a = 2 + 3 ⟹ 1 − a = − 1 − 3 < 0 ∴ drop a = 2 + 3 .
a = 2 − 3 ⟹ x = 2 2 − 3 ⟹ A △ A E F = 3 ( 2 − 3 ) = 2 3 − 3 .
h = x 2 − 3 x 2 = 3 2 x = 2 3 2 2 − 3 ⟹
The volume of the regular tetrahedron V T = 3 1 ( 2 − 3 ) 3 ( 2 3 2 2 − 3 ) =
3 2 2 ( 2 − 3 ) 2 3 = b a a ( a − b ) a b ⟹ a + b = 5 .