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Constructing a quadrilateral inside another one
J. Marshall AshDePaul UniversityChicago, IL 60614Michael A. AshDepartment of EconomicsUniversity of Massachusetts AmherstAmherst, MA 01003Peter F. AshCambridge CollegeCambridge, MA 02138
1 The quadrilateral ratio problem
In a convex quadrilateral
ABCD
join
A
to the midpoint of
BC
,
B
to the midpointof
CD
,
C
to the midpoint of
DA
, and
D
to the midpoint of
AB
. The intersectionsof these segments determine an inner quadrilateral
EFGH
as shown below.
EFHGABCD
Ash, Ash, and Ash
2Let
r
be the ratio of the quadrilateral areas,
r
=
area
(
EFGH
)
area
(
ABCD
)
. (1)The problem is to describe the value of
r
in terms of the geometry of
ABCD
.We first saw this problem in a projects book for Geometer’s Sketchpad.[Key]Simple numerical exploration has led some students to conjecture that
r
= 1
/
5
. InTheorem 1 we show that this is true in case the original quadrilateral is a parallelo-gram. However, the conjecture is false in general. In fact, the ratio can be any realnumber in the interval
(1
/
6
,
1
/
5]
. This is part of our Corollary 3, which provides acomplete solution to the problem.Suppose now that instead of a quadrilateral we had a triangle. Of course, joiningeach vertex to the opposite midpoint would not yield an inner triangle, since thethree lines are medians, which are concurrent in a point. To look for an analogousresult for a triangle, we can look for points which are not midpoints, but ratherdivide each side a ratio
ρ
of the distance from one point to the next,
0
< ρ <
1
. Fordefiniteness, we assume that “next point” in this definition is based on movement ina counterclockwise direction. We call these points
ρ
-points
. It turns out that for agiven
ρ
, the ratio of the area of the inner triangle to the area of the outer triangle isconstant independent of the initial triangle and is given by
(2
ρ
−
1)
2
ρ
2
−
ρ
+1
. Note that when
ρ
= 1
/
2
, this reduces to
0
, which provides a convoluted proof that the medians of a triangle are concurrent. When
ρ
= 1
/
3
, the area ratio is
1
/
7
, which the NobelPrize-winning physicist Richard Feynman once proved, though he was probably notthe first to do so. The result for general
ρ
is known, and a proof is given in [DeV],along with the Feynman story.Inspired by this result, we will study the quadrilateral question for
ρ
-points. Let
ABCD
be a convex quadrilateral and let
N
1
,N
2
,N
3
,
and
N
4
be chosen so that
N
1
isthe
ρ
-point of
BC
,
N
2
is the
ρ
-point of
CD
,
N
3
is the
ρ
-point of
DA
, and
N
4
is the
ρ
-point of
AB
. For fixed
ρ
(0
< ρ <
1)
connect each vertex of
ABCD
to the
ρ
-pointof the next side. (
A
to
N
1
,
B
to
N
2
,
C
to
N
3
, and
D
to
N
4
.) The intersections of the four line segments form the vertices of a quadrilateral
EFGH
.
Ash, Ash, and Ash
3
GHN
4
EFN
3
N
2
N
1
ABCD
Define the area ratio
r
(
ρ,ABCD
) =
Area
(
EFGH
)
Area
(
ABCD
)
.
Theorem 2 below states that as
ABCD
varies, the values of
r
(
ρ,ABCD
)
fill theinterval
(
m,M
] :=
(1
−
ρ
)
3
ρ
2
−
ρ
+ 1
,
(1
−
ρ
)
2
ρ
2
+ 1
(2)and that it is possible to give an explicit characterization of the set of convex quadri-laterals with maximal ratio
M
. The fact that
M
−
m
has a maximum value of about
.
034
and is usually much smaller explains the near constancy of
r
(
ρ,ABCD
)
as
ABCD
varies. Here are the graphs of
M
and
m
.
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