Find the least perimeter of a right triangle whose sides and altitudes are integers.
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We are looking for the "least" Pythagorean triangle such that the altitude from the hypotenuse is integer-valued. Letting the sides of the triangle be a , b , the hypotenuse c and the altitude from the hypotenuse be d , then the area of the triangle is both 2 1 a b and 2 1 c d . Thus we require that a b = c d ⟹ d = c a b .
Now the lengths of a primitive Pythagorean triangle are coprime, which means that for such triangles d cannot be an integer. But if we look at non-primitive Pythagorean triangles of side lengths k a , k b , k c for some integer k > 1 then d = c k a b , which implies that d will be an integer if c ∣ k .
Now the "least" hypotenuse of any Pythagorean triangle is 5 , so we will obtain the desired triangle by choosing k = 5 and the primitive Pythagorean triangle with side lengths 3 , 4 , 5 . This gives us 1 5 , 2 0 , 2 5 as the side lengths of the desired triangle, rendering a perimeter of 6 0 .