Tetrahedroid

Geometry Level 5

A regular tetrahedron of unit length sides (blue in the above figure) is surrounded by four other black regular tetrahedra of unit length sides such that each of the four surrounding black tetrahedra shares a face with the central blue tetrahedron.

The four unshared vertices (one from each of the black tetrahedra) form the vertices of a larger tetrahedron (red in the above figure).

The side length ratio of the larger red tetrahedron to that of the smaller blue one can be represented as A B \dfrac AB , where A A and B B are coprime positive integers. Find A + B A+B .


The answer is 8.

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1 solution

Mark Hennings
Nov 5, 2016

If the blue tetrahedron has side length 1 1 , and has centroid at the origin O O , it can be given by coordinates A : ( 1 2 , 0 , 1 2 2 ) B : ( 1 2 , 0 , 1 2 2 ) C : ( 0 , 1 2 , 1 2 2 ) D : ( 0 , 1 2 , 1 2 2 ) A\;:\;\big(-\tfrac12,0,-\tfrac{1}{2\sqrt{2}}\big) \hspace{1cm} B\;:\; \big(\tfrac12,0,-\tfrac{1}{2\sqrt{2}}\big) \hspace{1cm} C\;:\; \big(0,-\tfrac12,\tfrac{1}{2\sqrt{2}}\big) \hspace{1cm} D\;:\; \big(0,\tfrac12,\tfrac{1}{2\sqrt{2}}\big) The midpoint M M of the face A B C ABC has coordinates ( 0 , 1 6 , 1 6 2 ) \big(0,-\tfrac16,-\tfrac{1}{6\sqrt{2}}\big) Since the altitude of a regular tetrahedron of side length 1 1 is 2 3 \sqrt{\tfrac23} , one vertex of the red tetrahedron is the point P P , where O P = O M + 2 3 O M O M = 5 O M \overrightarrow{OP} \; = \; \overrightarrow{OM} + \sqrt{\tfrac23} \frac{\overrightarrow{OM}}{OM} \; = \; 5\overrightarrow{OM} and so O P = 5 O M = 5 2 6 OP = 5OM = \frac{5}{2\sqrt{6}} , while O A = 3 2 2 OA = \frac{\sqrt{3}}{2\sqrt{2}} . Note that, by symmetry, O O will also be the centroid of the red tetrahedron

Since the ratio of the sides of the tetrahedral is equal to the ratio of the distances from the common centroid to the vertices (in other words, the ratio of the circumradii), we deduce that the ratio of the sides of the two tetrahedra is O P O A = 5 3 \tfrac{OP}{OA} = \tfrac53 , making the answer 8 \boxed{8} .

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