The Three Medians

Geometry Level 3

If the three medians of a triangle are of length 4, 13 and 15 units. Then the area of the triangle is


The answer is 32.

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2 solutions

William Isoroku
Jan 14, 2015

There's a formula to find the area of a triangle given 3 medians: 4 3 s m ( s m m 1 ) ( s m m 2 ) ( s m m 3 ) \frac { 4 }{ 3 } \sqrt { { s }_{ m }({ s }_{ m }-{ m }_{ 1 })({ { s }_{ m } }-{ m }_{ 2 })({ s }_{ m }-{ m }_{ 3 }) }

Where m 1 , m 2 , m 3 { m }_{ 1 },{ m }_{ 2 },{ m }_{ 3 } are the medians and s m = m 1 + m 2 + m 3 2 { s }_{ m }=\frac { { m }_{ 1 }+{ m }_{ 2 }+{ m }_{ 3 } }{ 2 }

Ujjwal Rane
Jan 14, 2015

Cross reference: https://brilliant.org/problems/triangle-of-medians/

It can be shown that

  1. Medians of a triangle can be moved parallel to themselves to form a closed loop i.e. a triangle.

  2. The area of such a triangle is 3/4 the area of the original triangle

From Heron's formula, area of the 'median triangle' is 24

Thus the area of the original triangle must be 24 × 4 3 = 32 24 \times \frac{4}{3} = 32

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