Wedges in a triangle 2

Calculus Level 3

Three congruent sectors of a circle fit tightly inside an equilateral triangle as shown. The angle of the sectors is between 3 0 30^{\circ} and 12 0 120^{\circ} .

Find the maximum proportion of the triangle filled by the sectors.


The answer is 0.8156886563.

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.

1 solution

Jeremy Galvagni
Sep 29, 2018

If there's a closed form I don't plan find it. See the complicated function to be maximized below. The maximum occurs when the angle is about 79.7379197 7 79.73791977^{\circ}

Let the sectors have unit radius then the total area of the sectors is A ( θ ) = 3 θ π 36 0 \large A(\theta)=3\cdot \theta \cdot \frac{\pi}{360^{\circ}} where θ \theta is the angle in degrees.

The formula for the side length is S ( θ ) = 2 3 sin θ 2 cos θ + 3 2 sin θ \large S(\theta)=\frac{2\sqrt{3}\sin{\theta}-2\cos{\theta}+\sqrt{3}}{2\sin{\theta}}

The proportion to be maximized is then P ( θ ) = A 3 4 S 2 \LARGE P(\theta)=\frac{A}{\frac{\sqrt{3}}{4}S^{2}}

Which I first maximized with Geometer's Sketchpad and then confirmed with my graphing calculator which gives more digits of accuracy.

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...