Silhouette Riddle

Geometry Level 3

Three cuboid boxes are arranged and shone on such that the silhouette is of the same image in the front, lateral, and top views, as shown above. The numbers depicted indicate the lengths in each 2-D silhouette.

What is the total volume of these boxes?


The answer is 851.

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3 solutions

Nibedan Mukherjee
Jan 14, 2019

It would be easier to start off with a plain cube of side length 11 11 , which will have the same silhouette of a 11 × 11 11\times 11 square in every view, and from the question, every visible silhouette has an area of a 4 × 5 4\times 5 rectangle missing. This rectangle will act as a base of the missing cuboid.

Thus, we can visualize its chunk being chopped off as a 4 × 5 × 11 4\times 5\times 11 cuboid. This will result in the desired silhouette as shown in grey, below:

Next, we proceed similarly by cutting another cuboid of dimension of 4 × 5 × ( 11 5 ) = 4 × 5 × 6 4\times 5\times (11-5) = 4\times 5\times 6 ; this new cut cuboid has shorter length than previous one because a part of it was already cut in the first process. This again will result in the silhouette as shown in grey, below:

Finally, the last cuboid of 4 × 5 × ( 11 4 ) = 4 × 5 × 7 4\times 5\times (11-4) = 4\times 5\times 7 will be taken out, and the three boxes will be arranged as followed:

Even though there are many possible outcomes for the box combinations, the total volume will always equal:

1 1 3 4 × 5 × 11 4 × 5 × 6 4 × 5 × 7 = 1 1 3 4 × 5 × 24 = 1331 480 = 851 11^3- 4\times 5\times 11 - 4\times 5\times 6 - 4\times 5\times 7 = 11^3 - 4\times 5\times 24 = 1331 - 480 = \boxed{851}

As Always, elegance personified! nice representation Sir! Plz do check my approach...

nibedan mukherjee - 2 years, 4 months ago

Ok. Thank you.

Worranat Pakornrat - 2 years, 4 months ago
Chew-Seong Cheong
Jan 13, 2019

Plotting a 3-D drawing basing on the top, front and side views, we find that the three cuboids are 6 × 6 × 11 6\times 6 \times 11 , 5 × 7 × 7 5 \times 7 \times 7 , and 5 × 6 × 7 5\times 6 \times 7 . And their total volume is 6 × 6 × 11 + 5 × 7 × 7 + 5 × 6 × 7 = 851 6\times 6 \times 11 + 5 \times 7 \times 7 + 5\times 6 \times 7 = \boxed{851} .

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