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Solutionproblemoftheday 15oct2008 | PDF | Teaching Methods & Materials
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Solutionproblemoftheday 15oct2008

A hexagon is inscribed in a circle with three consecutive sides of length a and three consecutive sides of length b. By applying the Law of Cosines to two triangles formed by the sides, the radius R of the circle can be determined to be the square root of (a^2 + ab + b^2) divided by 3.

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169 views1 page

Solutionproblemoftheday 15oct2008

A hexagon is inscribed in a circle with three consecutive sides of length a and three consecutive sides of length b. By applying the Law of Cosines to two triangles formed by the sides, the radius R of the circle can be determined to be the square root of (a^2 + ab + b^2) divided by 3.

Uploaded by

zebra_finch
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Problem of the Day

15 October 2008

Problem. A hexagon inscribed in a circle has three consecutive sides of


length a and three consecutive sides of length b. Determine the radius of the
circle.
Solution. Let R be the radius of the circle. One can rearrange the sides
of the hexagon so that each pair of consecutive sides are of lengths a and b.
Since all the angles of the hexagon are congruent, each is 120 . Applying the
Law of Cosines to two triangles with a common side, we have
2R2 2R2 cos 120 = a2 + b2 2ab cos 120 ,
which yields
r
R=

a2 + ab + b2
.
3

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