1992 AIME Problems/Problem 13
From AoPSWiki
Problem
Triangle 
has 
and 
. What's the largest area that this triangle can have?
Solution
First, consider the triangle in a coordinate system with vertices at 
, 
, and 
.
Applying the distance formula, we see that 
.
We want to maximize 
, the height, with 
being the base. Simplifying gives 
. To maximize , we want to maximize 
. So if we can write: 
then 
is the maximum value for . This follows directly from the trivial inequality, because if 
then plugging in 
for 
gives us 
. So we can keep increasing the left hand side of our earlier equation until 
. We can factor into 
. We find , and plug into 
. Thus, the area is 
.
See also
| 1992 AIME (Problems • Resources) | ||
| Preceded by Problem 12 | Followed by Problem 14 | |
| 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 | ||
