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Slovenia — National Math Olympiad

Geometry Difficulty 4.6 AIME Prove it Slovenia

In the triangle ABCABC the bisector of the angle ∠BAC\angle BAC meets the segment BCBC at DD. The triangle ADCADC is isosceles with the apex at DD and the lengths of the segments CDCD and BDBD are ∣CD∣=36|CD| = 36 and ∣BD∣=64|BD| = 64. Find the lengths of the sides of the triangle ABCABC.

Solution

Obviously ∣BC∣=100|BC| = 100. Let us find the lengths of the other sides. We have ∠BAD=∠DAC=∠ACB\angle BAD = \angle DAC = \angle ACB, so the triangles ABDABD and CBACBA are congruent and ∣AC∣∣AD∣=∣AB∣∣BD∣=∣BC∣∣AB∣\frac{|AC|}{|AD|} = \frac{|AB|}{|BD|} = \frac{|BC|}{|AB|}. The second equality implies ∣AB∣=∣BD∣2⋅∣BC∣=64⋅100=80|AB| = \sqrt{|BD|^2 \cdot |BC|} = \sqrt{64 \cdot 100} = 80. It then follows from the first equality that ∣AC∣=∣AD∣∣AB∣∣BD∣=36⋅8064=45|AC| = \frac{|AD||AB|}{|BD|} = \frac{36 \cdot 80}{64} = 45.

Figure 1

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.