Let be an isosceles triangle with . The bisector of angle meets the side at the point .
a) Is the triangle isosceles whenever the triangle is isosceles?
b) Is the triangle isosceles whenever the triangle is isosceles?
Solution
a) Denote and .

Fig. 6
Assume that the triangle is isosceles. If , then the angles , and would be , and respectively, which implies giving . This is impossible, since the triangle has two angles equal to . If , then we would get , which is also impossible. This leaves the only option . Then, the triangles and are similar, since all corresponding angles are the same. Therefore , showing that the triangle is isosceles with .
b) If the angles of the triangle are , , (Fig. 7), then , which shows that the triangle is isosceles with . At the same time, the angles in the triangle are , , , which are pairwise different, so the triangle is not isosceles.

Fig. 7
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