Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.1 AIME, harder Prove it Ireland

In the triangle ABCABC, the length of the altitude from AA to BCBC is equal to 11. DD is the midpoint of ACAC. What are the possible lengths of BDBD?

Solution

Solution 1. Place AA at (0,1)(0, 1), BB at (b,0)(b, 0) and CC at (c,0)(c, 0) with bcb \neq c. Then the coordinates of DD are (c/2,1/2)(c/2, 1/2). The length of BDBD is thus (bc/2)2+1/4\sqrt{(b-c/2)^2 + 1/4}. This has a minimum value of 1/21/2 when b=c/2b=c/2 and b0b \neq 0. There is no upper bound.

Solution 2. Let the position of the point AA and the line BCBC be fixed, but consider the points BB and CC to be variable. As the distance of AA from the line BCBC is equal to 11, the midpoint DD of ACAC lies on the line LL which is parallel to BCBC and has distance 1/21/2 from AA and from BCBC. Therefore, the minimal distance between BB and DD is 1/21/2 and for any given CC this is achieved when BDBD is perpendicular to BCBC, provided that ACAC is not perpendicular to BCBC. There is no upper bound for BD|BD| because BB can lie as far away as we like.

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