A box in the shape of a triangle with side lengths , , and is being used to
pack a pizza pi. The pizza is in the shape of a circle and just touches each of the
three sides of the triangular box. What is the area of the circle?
Proposed as the problem of the week #22 of year 2025/26, by the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing of the University of Waterloo.
In the geometry lingo, this e is what is called the circle inscribed to the triangle, and
the way to measure its radius – which is the essential parameter from which we will derive
its area – is by leveraging precisely this condition.
For the inexperienced reader, pause and try to convince yourself that such a circle intersects with its bounding shape forming -angles on such points; using this result we will now divide the original box into three smaller ones, which share the property that their height is the radius we are looking for: With this key insight in mind, we can now relate the area of the big triangle, to that of the smaller ones, and thus to ; that is,
However, we still have not figured out , and it is Heron's formula the one that tells us exactly this. Letting be half of the perimeter, then so finally,
For the inexperienced reader, pause and try to convince yourself that such a circle intersects with its bounding shape forming -angles on such points; using this result we will now divide the original box into three smaller ones, which share the property that their height is the radius we are looking for: With this key insight in mind, we can now relate the area of the big triangle, to that of the smaller ones, and thus to ; that is,
However, we still have not figured out , and it is Heron's formula the one that tells us exactly this. Letting be half of the perimeter, then so finally,