2016 AIME II Problems/Problem 14

Problem

Equilateral $\triangle ABC$ has side length $600$ . Points $P$ and $Q$ lie outside the plane of $\triangle ABC$ and are on opposite sides of the plane. Furthermore, $PA=PB=PC$ , and $QA=QB=QC$ , and the planes of $\triangle PAB$ and $\triangle QAB$ form a $120^{\circ}$ dihedral angle (the angle between the two planes). There is a point $O$ whose distance from each of $A,B,C,P,$ and $Q$ is $d$ . Find $d$ .

Solution 1

The inradius of $\triangle ABC$ is $100\sqrt 3$ and the circumradius is $200 \sqrt 3$ . Now, consider the line perpendicular to plane $ABC$ through the circumcenter of $\triangle ABC$ . Note that $P,Q,O$ must lie on that line to be equidistant from each of the triangle's vertices. Also, note that since $P, Q, O$ are collinear, and $OP=OQ$ , we must have $O$ is the midpoint of $PQ$ . Now, Let $K$ be the circumcenter of $\triangle ABC$ , and $L$ be the foot of the altitude from $A$ to $BC$ . We must have $\tan(\angle KLP+ \angle QLK)= \tan(120^{\circ})$ . Setting $KP=x$ and $KQ=y$ , assuming WLOG $x>y$ , we must have $\tan(120^{\circ})=-\sqrt{3}=\dfrac{\dfrac{x+y}{100 \sqrt{3}}}{\dfrac{30000-xy}{30000}}$ . Therefore, we must have $100(x+y)=xy-30000$ . Also, we must have $\left(\dfrac{x+y}{2}\right)^{2}=\left(\dfrac{x-y}{2}\right)^{2}+120000$ by the Pythagorean theorem, so we have $xy=120000$ , so substituting into the other equation we have $90000=100(x+y)$ , or $x+y=900$ . Since we want $\dfrac{x+y}{2}$ , the desired answer is $\boxed{450}$ .

Short Simple Solution

Draw a good diagram. Draw $CH$ as an altitude of the triangle. Scale everything down by a factor of $100\sqrt{3}$ , so that $AB=2\sqrt{3}$ . Finally, call the center of the triangle U. Draw a cross-section of the triangle via line $CH$ , which of course includes $P, Q$ . From there, we can call $OU=h$ . There are two crucial equations we can thus generate. WLOG set $PU<QU$ , then we call $PU=d-h, QU=d+h$ . First equation: using the Pythagorean Theorem on $\triangle UOB$ , $h^2+2^2=d^2$ . Next, using the tangent addition formula on angles $\angle PHU, \angle UHQ$ we see that after simplifying $-d^2+h^2=-4, 2d=3\sqrt{3}$ in the numerator, so $d=\frac{3\sqrt{3}}{2}$ . Multiply back the scalar and you get $\boxed{450}$ . Not that hard, was it?

Solution 3

To make numbers more feasible, we'll scale everything down by a factor of $100$ so that $\overline{AB}=\overline{BC}=\overline{AC}=6$ . We should also note that $P$ and $Q$ must lie on the line that is perpendicular to the plane of $ABC$ and also passes through the circumcenter of $ABC$ (due to $P$ and $Q$ being equidistant from $A$ , $B$ , $C$ ), let $D$ be the altitude from $C$ to $AB$ . We can draw a vertical cross-section of the figure then: $[asy]pair C, D, I, P, Q, O; D=(0,0); C=(5.196152,0); P=(1.732051,7.37228); I=(1.732051,0); Q=(1.732051,-1.62772); O=(1.732051,2.87228); draw(C--Q--D--P--cycle); draw(C--D, dashed); draw(P--Q, dotted); draw(O--C, dotted); label("$C$", C, E); label("$D$", D, W); label("$I$", I, NW); label("$P$", P, N); label("$Q$", Q, S); label("$O$", O, SW); dot(O); dot(I);[/asy]$ We let $\angle PDI=\alpha$ so $\angle QDI=120^{\circ}-\alpha$ , also note that $\overline{PO}=\overline{QO}=\overline{CO}=d$ . Because $I$ is the centroid of $ABC$ , we know that ratio of $\overline{CI}$ to $\overline{DI}$ is $2:1$ . Since we've scaled the figure down, the length of $CD$ is $3\sqrt{3}$ , from this it's easy to know that $\overline{CI}=2\sqrt{3}$ and $\overline{DI}=\sqrt{3}$ . The following two equations arise: $\begin{align} \sqrt{3}\tan{\left(\alpha\right)}+\sqrt{3}\tan{\left(120^{\circ}-\alpha\right)}&=2d \\ \sqrt{3}\tan{\left(\alpha\right)} - d &= \sqrt{d^{2}-12} \end{align}$ Using trig identities for the tangent, we find that $\begin{align*} \sqrt{3}\tan{\left(120^{\circ}-\alpha\right)}&=\sqrt{3}\left(\frac{\tan{\left(120^{\circ}\right)}+\tan{\left(\text{-}\alpha\right)}}{1-\tan{\left(120^{\circ}\right)}\tan{\left(\text{-}\alpha\right)}}\right) \\ &= \sqrt{3}\left(\frac{\text{-}\sqrt{3}+\tan{\left(\text{-}\alpha\right)}}{1+\sqrt{3}\tan{\left(\text{-}\alpha\right)}}\right) \\ &= \sqrt{3}\left(\frac{\text{-}\sqrt{3}-\tan{\left(\alpha\right)}}{1-\sqrt{3}\tan{\left(\alpha\right)}}\right) \\ &= \frac{\sqrt{3}\tan{\left(\alpha\right)}+3}{\sqrt{3}\tan{\left(\alpha\right)}-1}.\end{align*}$ Okay, now we can plug this into $\left(1\right)$ to get: $\begin{align}\sqrt{3}\tan{\left(\alpha\right)}+\frac{\sqrt{3}\tan{\left(\alpha\right)}+3}{\sqrt{3}\tan{\left(\alpha\right)}-1}&=2d \\ \sqrt{3}\tan{\left(\alpha\right)} - d &= \sqrt{d^{2}-12} \end{align}$ Notice that $\alpha$ only appears in the above system of equations in the form of $\sqrt{3}\tan{\left(\alpha\right)}$ , we can set $\sqrt{3}\tan{\left(\alpha\right)}=a$ for convenience since we really only care about $d$ . Now we have $\begin{align}a+\frac{a+3}{a-1}&=2d \\ a - d &= \sqrt{d^{2}-12} \end{align}$ Looking at $\left(2\right)$ , it's tempting to square it to get rid of the square-root so now we have: $\begin{align*}a^{2}-2ad+d^{2}&=d^{2}-12 \\ a - 2ad &= \text{-}12 \end{align*}$ See the sneaky $2d$ in the above equation? That we means we can substitute it for $a+\frac{a+3}{a-1}$ : $\begin{align*}a^{2}-2ad+d^{2}&=d^{2}-12 \\ a^{2} - a\left(a+\frac{a+3}{a-1}\right) &= \text{-}12 \\ a^{2}-a^{2}-\frac{a^{2}+3a}{a-1} &=\text{-}12 \\ -\frac{a^{2}+3a}{a-1}&=\text{-}12 \\ \text{-}a^{2}-3a&=\text{-}12a+12 \\ 0 &= a^{2}-9a+12 \end{align*}$ Use the quadratic formula, we find that $a=\frac{9\pm\sqrt{9^{2}-4\left(1\right)\left(12\right)}}{2\left(1\right)}=\frac{9\pm\sqrt{33}}{2}$ - the two solutions were expected because $a$ can be $\angle PDI$ or $\angle QDI$ . We can plug this into $\left(1\right)$ : $\begin{align*}a+\frac{a+3}{a-1}&=2d \\ \frac{9\pm\sqrt{33}}{2}+\frac{\frac{9\pm\sqrt{33}}{2}+3}{\frac{9\pm\sqrt{33}}{2}-1}=2d \\ \frac{9\pm\sqrt{33}}{2}+\frac{15\pm\sqrt{33}}{7\pm\sqrt{33}} &= 2d\end{align*}$ I'll use $a=\frac{9+\sqrt{33}}{2}$ because both values should give the same answer for $d$ . $\begin{align*} \frac{9+\sqrt{33}}{2}+\frac{15+\sqrt{33}}{7+\sqrt{33}} &= 2d \\ \frac{\left(9+\sqrt{33}\right)\left(7+\sqrt{33}\right)+\left(2\right)\left(15+\sqrt{33}\right)}{\left(2\right)\left(7+\sqrt{33}\right)} &= 2d \\ \frac{63+33+16\sqrt{33}+30+2\sqrt{33}}{14+2\sqrt{33}} &= 2d \\ \frac{126+18\sqrt{33}}{14+2\sqrt{33}} &= 2d \\ 9 &= 2d \\ \frac{9}{2} &= d\end{align*}$ Wait! Before you get excited, remember that we scaled the entire figure by $100$ ?? That means that the answer is $d=100\times\frac{9}{2}=\boxed{450}$ . An alternate way of proceeding after finding $a$ (credit to riemanntensor), was to average the two possible values, you can see for yourself why this would work.

-fatant

Solution 4

We use the diagram from solution 3. From basic angle chasing, $180=\angle{QOC}+\angle{CO}P=2\angle{OCP}+2\angle{OCQ}=2\angle{QCP}$ so triangle QCP is a right triangle. This means that triangles $CQI$ and $CPI$ are similar. If we let $\angle{IDQ}=x$ and $\angle{PDI}=y$ , then we know $x+y=120$ and $\frac{PG}{GC}=\frac{GC}{GQ}\Rightarrow\frac{100\sqrt{3}\tan{y}}{200\sqrt{3}}=\frac{200\sqrt{3}}{100\sqrt{3}\tan{x}}\Rightarrow\tan{x}\tan{y}=4$ We also know that $PQ=2d=100\sqrt{3}(\tan{x}+\tan{y})$ $d=50\sqrt{3}(\tan{x}+\tan{y})$ $\frac{d}{1-\tan{x}\tan{y}}=50\sqrt{3}\cdot\frac{\tan{x}+\tan{y}}{1-\tan{x}\tan{y}}$ $\frac{d}{-3}=50\sqrt{3}\tan{(x+y)}$ $d=-150\sqrt{3}\tan{120}=-150\sqrt{3}(-\sqrt{3})=\boxed{450}$

-EZmath2006

2016 AIME II (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 13	Followed by Problem 15
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