Given a circle with a radius of "a", what is the smallest area of an isosceles triangle circumscribed on the circle (circle inside of triangle)? The area of the triangle will always be larger than that of the circle. I need to know HOW to do this. I can then figure the answer on my own. I tried using an angle in the open interval from 0 to pi/2. I figured the side lengths of the triangle in terms of the angle and came up with a function. The function didn't match my logic. Logically speaking, the area of the triangle will never approach 0 unless "a" approaches 0. The function arbitrarily approached 0 as the angle approached pi/2. Please help. I need this by Wednesday. Thanks for any and all the help!
2006-07-22
14:15:03
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5 answers
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asked by
Lawrence
1
in
Mathematics