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jmc

geometry senior

Problem

In triangle , , , and . Points and are on with on , points and are on with on , and points and are on with on . In addition, the points are positioned so that , , and . Right angle folds are then made along , , and . The resulting figure is placed on a level floor to make a table with triangular legs. Let be the maximum possible height of a table constructed from triangle whose top is parallel to the floor. Then can be written in the form , where and are relatively prime positive integers and is a positive integer that is not divisible by the square of any prime. Find .
problem
Solution
Note that the area is given by Heron's formula and it is . Let denote the length of the altitude dropped from vertex i. It follows that . From similar triangles we can see that . We can see this is true for any combination of a,b,c and thus the minimum of the upper bounds for h yields .
Final answer
318