Maths Olympiad Prep

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, 2020

Geometry Difficulty 6.1 National Olympiad Prove it Romania

Let DD be a point in the interior of triangle ABCABC such that BAD=40\angle BAD = 40^\circ, DAC=30\angle DAC = 30^\circ, BCD=20\angle BCD = 20^\circ and DCA=50\angle DCA = 50^\circ. Find CBD\angle CBD.

Figure 1

Solution

Observe that ABCABC is an isosceles triangle, with BA=BCBA = BC and ABC=40\angle ABC = 40^\circ. Suppose that the perpendicular bisector of the triangle's base intersects ADAD at TT.
Since DAC<DCA\angle DAC < \angle DCA, we have CD<DACD < DA therefore T(AD)T \in (AD) and TBC=20\angle TBC = 20^\circ.

We will prove that DD is the incenter of triangle BTCBTC, hence BDBD bisects TBC\angle TBC, and it follows that CBD=10\angle CBD = 10^\circ.

Because TCATCA is an isosceles triangle, we have TCA=30\angle TCA = 30^\circ, and hence TCD=20=BCD\angle TCD = 20^\circ = \angle BCD. It follows that CDCD bisects BCT\angle BCT.

A short computation shows that CTB=BTA=120\angle CTB = \angle BTA = 120^\circ and DTC=60\angle DTC = 60^\circ, therefore TDTD is the angle bisector of BTC\angle BTC.

We conclude that DD is the incenter of triangle BCTBCT, as desired.

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