Each green point is the midpoint of the side of the square.
Which area is larger, that of the blue triangle or the red quadrilateral?
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.
Let the square be A B C D with side length 2 a , the midpoints be M and N , and A N cuts D M at P .
We note that △ A M P , △ A P D and △ A M D are similar 1-2- 5 triangles. Therefore, the areas are directly proportional to the squares of their hypotenuse. Therefore, [ A M P ] : [ A P D ] : [ A M D ] = a 2 : ( 2 a ) 2 : ( 5 a ) 2 = 1 : 4 : 5 . Since [ A M D ] = 2 1 ( a ) ( 2 a ) = a 2 , then [ A M P ] = 5 1 a 2 and [ A P D ] = 5 4 a 2 .
Now, we have:
{ A r e d = [ M B N P ] = [ A B N ] − [ A M P ] = 2 1 ( a ) ( 2 a ) − 5 1 a 2 = 5 4 a 2 A b l u e = [ D N P ] = [ A D N ] − [ A P D ] = 2 1 ( 2 a ) ( 2 a ) − 5 4 a 2 = 5 6 a 2
⟹ A b l u e > A r e d .