P is a point on the circumference of a circle radius r which rolls, without slipping, inside a circle of radius 2r. What is the locus of P?
The coke machine in college takes 50 pence pieces. It also takes a certain foreign coin of traditional design. Coins inserted into the machine slide down a chute into the machine and a drink is duly released. How many more revolutions does the foreign coin make over the 50 pence piece going down the chute? N.B. A 50 pence piece is a 7 sided polygon ABCDEFG with rounded edges, obtained by replacing AB with arc centred at E and radius EA; replacing BC with arc centred at F radius FB ...etc..
What happens to the perimeter of triangle ABC as the two smaller circles change size and roll around inside the bigger circle?
Fermat was an amateur mathematician of great intellect. He wrote this problem:
Find the point whose sum of distances from the vertices (corners) of a given triangle is a minimum.