Kara Z. answered 28d
Master's in Chemical Engineering with 15+ Years Tutoring Experience
The easiest method for finding the area of the shaded region will be to subtract the area of the triangle from the area of the semicircle.
According to Thale's Theorem, any angle inscribed in a semicircle must be a right triangle with its right angle on the arc of the circle. (This is a specialized case of the Inscribed Angle Theorem.) Since we know that one angle of our triangle is 30°, we can use the Triangle Sum Theorem which states the the three interior angles of a triangle must add up to 180°. This means that the third angle of the triangle must measure 60° and that we must have a 30-60-90 triangle.
The diagram labels the longer leg of the triangle (opposite the 60° angle) as 9√3. According to the ratios of a 30-60-90 triangle, we can divide the long leg by √3 to get the length of the short leg (opposite the 30° angle). That gives us 9. The ratios also tell us that we can multiply the short leg of the triangle by 2 to get the length of the hypotenuse (opposite the 90° angle). That gives us 18.
So we know that the base of our triangle is 9, its height is 9√3, and the diameter of the circle is 18. Since the diameter is twice the length of the radius of a circle, our radius is 9.
Area of a triangle = 1/2bh = 1/2(9)(9√3) = 81√3/2
Area of semicircle = 1/2π r^2 = 1/2π(9)^2 = 81π/2
Shaded area = (semicircle area) - (triangle area)
= 81π/2 - 81√3/2
= 81/2 (π-√3)
≈ 57.0864
Aaron P.
request for more examples08/10/25