Triangles inside Pentagon

Geometry Level 4

The picture above shows a regular pentagon A B C D E ABCDE . Let R R be the ratio of the area of triangle A B D ABD to the area of pentagon A B C D E ABCDE .

Find 1000 R \displaystyle \left \lfloor 1000R \right \rfloor .


The answer is 447.

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.

2 solutions

Chan Lye Lee
Apr 19, 2016

Let the point F F be the centre of the pentagon, and the point G be the foot of D F DF on A B AB , as shown.

It is not difficult to find out that G F B = 3 6 \angle GFB =36 ^{\circ} and that G D B = 1 8 \angle GDB =18 ^{\circ} .

Now, the area of the triangle A B D ABD is ( A B ) ( G B ) 2 tan 1 8 \frac{(AB)(GB)}{2\tan 18 ^{\circ}} while the area of the pentagon A B C D ABCD is 5 × ( A B ) ( G B ) 2 tan 3 6 5\times \frac{(AB)(GB)}{2\tan 36 ^{\circ}} .

Hence 1000 R = 1000 × tan 3 6 5 tan 1 8 = 1000 5 = 447 \displaystyle \left \lfloor 1000R \right \rfloor =\left \lfloor 1000\times\frac{\tan 36 ^{\circ}}{5\tan 18 ^{\circ}} \right \rfloor= \left \lfloor \frac{1000}{\sqrt{5}} \right \rfloor=447 .

@Chan Lye Lee Nice problem!

Drex Beckman - 5 years, 1 month ago

how do you get the area formula using tangent angle and the triangle side?

de azalea - 4 years, 3 months ago
Joon Seo Song
May 6, 2016

I used another method. I first let each side of the pentagon to be 2. I combined the two non shaded triangles and make a rhombus, and find out the area using trigonometry ratios ( forming right angles in the non-shaded triangles by dividing them into half ) to find the length of the diagonals and the rhombus area formula (1/2 pq) and found the area of the shaded triangle using 1/2absinC (using the value found from the rhombus, since the longer diagonal of the rhombus is the same as the sides of the shaded isosceles triangle). Then I found the ratio between the triangle and the whole pentagon and multiplied by 1000, and found the answer.

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...