Kelvin the Frog lives in a triangle with side lengths 4, 5 and 6. One day he starts at some point on side of the triangle, hops in a straight line to some point on side of the triangle, hops in a straight line to some point on side of the triangle, and finally hops back to his original position on side of the triangle. The smallest distance Kelvin could have hopped is for relatively prime positive integers and . What is ?
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The solution to Fagnano's problem is the orthic triangle . As the given triangle is acute the perimeter of the orthic triangle is a cos ( A ) + b cos ( B ) + c cos ( C ) where a , b , c are the side lengths and A , B , C the angles opposite sides a , b , c respectively.
With ( a , b , c ) = ( 4 , 5 , 6 ) , we then make use of the cosine law to find that
cos ( A ) = 2 b c b 2 + c 2 − a 2 = 4 3 , cos ( B ) = 2 a c a 2 + c 2 − b 2 = 1 6 9 and
cos ( C ) = 2 a b a 2 + b 2 − c 2 = 8 1 , resulting in a perimeter of
4 ∗ 4 3 + 5 ∗ 1 6 9 + 6 ∗ 8 1 = 1 6 1 0 5 , and so m + n = 1 0 5 + 1 6 = 1 2 1 .