A Harvard Brain Teaser
Think Of Hexagons!
The figure is composed of 6 semi-circles with radii 1. Find the area of the figure.
Give this problem a try before jumping in for the solution!
Solution
We will annotate the diagram as follows.
As we can see, the 3 semi-circles surrounding the figure can be moved to the areas shaded in blue, forming a hexagon.
That means we can simply compute the area of the hexagon.
We will first find the height of each equilateral triangle.
The total area is the sum of the 6 equilateral triangles
We have found our answer!
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Happy reading,
Barry 🍩