Three pentagram-shaped stars (the stars formed from the diagonals of a regular pentagon) are stacked up so that the bottom two ends of the tips touch the middle ends of the tips of the star below. (See diagram.)

The distance from the top of the stack to the floor (where the bottom star's "feet" rest) is 4 feet.

What is the distance between the bottom two ends of the tips of the stack that touch the floor?

(In reply to different answer by vectorboy)

In your working you have stated:

We're told the stacked height is 4. I.e., h(lit) + h(med) + h(big) = 4.

Note that while the height of the stack is 4 units, this height is NOT the summative total of three individual pentagrams.  The top and bottom pentagrams actually overlap the height of the middle one.

Posted by brianjn on 2004-05-23 02:09:11