AoPSWiki
Do you have what it takes to be the next brilliant trader, researcher, or developer at Jane Street Capital? Find out in the Careers in Mathematics Forum.

1970 Canadian MO Problems/Problem 5

From AoPSWiki

Problem

A quadrilateral has one vertex on each side of a square of side-length 1. Show that the lengths a, b, c and d of the sides of the quadrilateral satisfy the inequalities 2\le a^2+b^2+c^2+d^2\le 4.


Solution

Let the quadrilateral be ABCD. Suppose A is a distance w, 1-w from the two nearest vertices of the square. Define x, y, z similarly. Then the sum of the squares of the sides of the quadrilateral is w^2 + (1-w)^2 + x^2 + (1-x)^2 + y^2 + (1-y)^2 + z^2 + (1-z)^2. But w^2 + (1-w)^2 = 2(w - \frac{1}{2})^2 + \frac{1}{2} which is at least \frac{1}{2} and at most 1. Similarly for the other pairs of terms, and hence proved.


1970 Canadian MO (Problems)
Preceded by
Problem 4
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Followed by
Problem 6


Do you have what it takes to be the next brilliant trader, researcher, or developer at Jane Street Capital? Find out in the Careers in Mathematics Forum.
© Copyright 2008 AoPS Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. • FoundationPrivacyContact Us