In the triangle , the length of the altitude from to is equal to . is the midpoint of . What are the possible lengths of ?
Solution
Solution 1. Place at , at and at with . Then the coordinates of are . The length of is thus . This has a minimum value of when and . There is no upper bound.
Solution 2. Let the position of the point and the line be fixed, but consider the points and to be variable. As the distance of from the line is equal to , the midpoint of lies on the line which is parallel to and has distance from and from . Therefore, the minimal distance between and is and for any given this is achieved when is perpendicular to , provided that is not perpendicular to . There is no upper bound for because can lie as far away as we like.
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