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Geometry Difficulty 5.3 AIME, harder Prove it Ireland

Point DD is on side ACAC of triangle ABCABC such that ABC=DAC=30\angle ABC = \angle DAC = 30^\circ and ADB=45\angle ADB = 45^\circ. Prove that BD=DC|BD| = |DC|.

Figure 1

Solutions — 2

Solution 1

Let OO be the circumcentre of ABC\triangle ABC and EE the point where the line ADAD meets the circumcircle again.

Figure 2

Because central angles are twice inscribed angles subtended by the same arc, we obtain COA=2CBA=60\angle COA = 2\angle CBA = 60^\circ and EOC=2EAC=60\angle EOC = 2\angle EAC = 60^\circ. Using this and OA=OC=OE|OA| = |OC| = |OE|, we see that the triangles OACOAC and OCEOCE are equilateral. This implies that AEAE is the perpendicular bisector of OCOC and we obtain DO=DC|DO| = |DC| and EO=EC|EO| = |EC|. This implies that DOE\angle DOE is congruent to DCE\angle DCE, in particular, ODE=CDE=ADB=45\angle ODE = \angle CDE = \angle ADB = 45^\circ and hence ODOD is perpendicular to BCBC. This implies that DD is the mid point of BCBC, as required.

Solution 2

In triangle ABDABD we have BAD=1803045=105\angle BAD = 180^\circ - 30^\circ - 45^\circ = 105^\circ. Because sin105=cos15\sin 105^\circ = \cos 15^\circ and sin30=2sin15cos15\sin 30^\circ = 2 \sin 15^\circ \cos 15^\circ, with the aid of the sine rule for ABD\triangle ABD we obtain
BD=sin105sin30AD=12sin15AD. |BD| = \frac{\sin 105^\circ}{\sin 30^\circ} |AD| = \frac{1}{2 \sin 15^\circ} |AD|.
On the other hand, the sine rule for ADC\triangle ADC gives
DC=sin30sin15AD=2cos15AD. |DC| = \frac{\sin 30^\circ}{\sin 15^\circ} |AD| = 2 \cos 15^\circ |AD|.
Finally, using sin30=1/2\sin 30^\circ = 1/2 we get 1=2sin30=4sin15cos151 = 2 \sin 30^\circ = 4 \sin 15^\circ \cos 15^\circ and this implies

12sin15\frac{1}{2 \sin 15^\circ} = 2 cos15,hence\cos 15^\circ, \quad \text{hence} \quad |BD| = |DC|.

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