Height of an irregular tetrahedron with an equilateral base and lateral faces making angles $60^\circ$, $60^\circ$, $80^\circ$ with that base

3danalytic geometrysolid-geometry

An irregular tetrahedron has a base that is an equilateral triangle of side length $10$. The lateral faces make angles of $60^\circ, 60^\circ$ and $80^\circ$ with the base. Find the height of the tetrahedron.

So, one way I thought I could solve this problem is using coordinate geometry, specifically attaching a reference frame to the base, and writing the equations of the three planes that represent the three lateral faces, and then solving the linear system for the apex coordinates.

Best Answer

Given a tetrahedron with base $ABC$ and apex $D$, let

  • $E$ be the orthogonal projection of $D$ onto the plane holding $ABC$.
  • $h = |DE|$ will be the height of tetrahedron.
  • $\theta_A / \theta_B / \theta_C$ be the angle between faces $DBC$ / $DCA$ / $DAB$ and base $ABC$.
  • $\ell_A / \ell_B / \ell_C$ be the distance of $E$ to edges $BC$ / $CA$ / $AB$.

As long as all $\theta_A, \theta_B, \theta_C < 90^\circ$, $E$ lies inside $ABC$. Furthermore, we have

  • $\ell_A = h \cot\theta_A$, $\ell_B = h \cot \theta_B$ and $\ell_C = h\cot\theta_C$
  • $|BC|\ell_A + |CA|\ell_B + |BC|\ell_C = 2\verb/Area/(ABC)$

For the tetrahedron at hand, we have $|AB| = |BC| = |CA| = 10$ and $\verb/Area/(ABC ) = \frac{\sqrt{3}}{4}(10)^2$.
This leads to

$$\ell_A + \ell_B + \ell_C = 5\sqrt{3}$$

and as a result, $$\begin{align} h = \frac{\ell_A + \ell_B + \ell_C}{\cot\theta_A + \cot\theta_B + \cot\theta_C} &= \frac{5\sqrt{3}}{2\cot(60^\circ) + \cot(80^\circ)} = \frac{15}{2 + \sqrt{3}\cot(80^\circ)}\\ &\sim 6.506442514261543\end{align}$$