equilateral triangle....

If (0,0),(a,11) and (b,37) are points of a equilateral triangle.....Find ab?

9 Answers

262
Aditya Bhutra ·

= - 3*37*114 ??

1057
Ketan Chandak ·

nah.....the answer is a positive integer....

36
rahul ·

407

1057
Ketan Chandak ·

nopes dude.....i dun knw de correct answer but the options are 216,495,315 and 365...

36
rahul ·

hmm.... question is a bit different one....

u can get the soln. here...

http://web2.uwindsor.ca/math/wlyee/Putnam/Fall07/UWUndergraduateMathContestSolutions.pdf

my approach was a bit different one but came up with -407
but there comes two values of a in the soln abve out of which -407 is unacceptable.. :P

1
rishabh ·

a much better way would be to use complex numbers,

let z1 = 0
z2 = a + 11i
z3 = b + 37i

we know that if z1 , z2 , z3 form equilateral triangle then ,
z12 + z22 + z32 = z1 z2 + z2 z3 + z3 z4

(by rotation formula...which actually follows from the fact tht angle between them is 60)

plug in the values and simplify and equate real and imaginary part to get,

a = 21 √3 and b = 5√3
.:. ab = 315

7
Sigma ·

i thnk it is better to solve this sum by complex as done by rishabh

1
varun.tinkle ·

its best to use the fromula for equilatreal trinagle which
is
x3=x1+x2+/-√3(y2-y1)/2 and similaarly for y cooridnate except instead of +- it is -+ it is very time saving and eliminates the need to do any computation

1
Nilabjo Dey ·

A^2-B^2=37^2-11^2

Your Answer

Close [X]