14 Mar 2026

A box in the shape of a triangle with side lengths 13, 14, and 15 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?
π

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 πe 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 90-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:
r
r
r
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 r; that is, [ABC]=1213r+1214r+1215r=21rr=[ABC]21.
However, we still have not figured out [ABC], and it is Heron's formula the one that tells us exactly this. Letting s be half of the perimeter, then [ABC]=s(s13)(s14)(s15)=21·8·7·6=84, so finally, r=8421=4[π]=π·42=16π.