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 Have we 'erred' in interpreting the text? by brianjn)

Realize that I didn't know the solution when posted, so the joy of confirmation would come when, as many of you realized, you got mostly the same answer. If you were concluding on the basis that I had a solution for every posed problem, that would be faulty.

To address a minor problem, the problem itself asked for the distance from the top point to the floor, (the line that runs through the bottom two points) I think it is quite fair to assume the floor exists between the two bottom points, and it is a line.

Posted by Gamer on 2007-03-12 21:08:21