
89.2. Three sides of a tetrahedron are right-angled triangles having the right angle at their common vertex. The areas of these sides are $A, B$, and $C$. Find the total surface area of the tetrahedron.


Solution 1. Let $P Q R S$ be the tetrahedron of the problem and let $S$ be the vertex common to the three sides which are right-angled triangles. Let the areas of $P Q S, Q R S$, and $R P S$ be $A, B$, and $C$, respectively. Denote the area of $Q R S$ by $X$. If $S S^{\prime}$ is the altitude from $S$ (onto $P Q R$ ) and $\angle R S S^{\prime}=\alpha, \angle P S S^{\prime}=\beta, \angle Q S S^{\prime}=\gamma$, the rectangular parallelepiped with $S S^{\prime}$ as a diameter, gives by double use of the Pythagorean theorem

$$
\begin{gathered}
S S^{\prime 2}=\left(S S^{\prime} \cos \alpha\right)^{2}+\left(S S^{\prime} \sin \alpha\right)^{2} \\
=\left(S S^{\prime} \cos \alpha\right)^{2}+\left(S S^{\prime} \cos \beta\right)^{2}+\left(S S^{\prime} \cos \gamma\right)^{2}
\end{gathered}
$$

or

$$
\cos ^{2} \alpha+\cos ^{2} \beta+\cos ^{2} \gamma=1
$$

(a well-known formula). The magnitude of the dihedral angle between two planes equals the angle between the normals of the planes. So $\alpha, \beta$, and $\gamma$ are the magnitudes of the dihedral angles between $P Q R$ and $P Q S, Q R S$, and $R P S$, respectively. Looking at the projections of $P Q R$ onto the three other sides of $P Q R S$, we get $A=X \cos \alpha, B=X \cos \beta$, and $C=X \cos \gamma$. But (1) now yields $X^{2}=A^{2}+B^{2}+C^{2}$. The total area of $P Q R S$ then equals $A+B+C+\sqrt{A^{2}+B^{2}+C^{2}}$.
