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Geometry Difficulty 4.8 AIME Find the answer Italy

Problem:

Luigi drew in his notebook an isosceles triangle ABCABC in which the sides emanating from AA are equal and, after drawing the internal bisector of the angle ABC^\widehat{ABC} which meets the side ACAC at PP, he noticed that the circle through B,P,CB, P, C also passed through the midpoint of ABAB. He then asked himself what the value of the angle BAC^\widehat{BAC} was. What is the correct answer?

Pick one

Solution

Solution:

The answer is (C). Let MM be the midpoint of ABAB. The angles PBM^\widehat{PBM} and PCM^\widehat{PCM} are congruent because they subtend the same arc. Since the triangle is isosceles, the angles ABC^\widehat{ABC} and ACB^\widehat{ACB} are equal and therefore, by subtracting equal angles, MCB^=PBC^\widehat{MCB}=\widehat{PBC} and MM is also the foot of the bisector of the angle ACB^\widehat{ACB}, just as PP is also the midpoint of the side ACAC, since the two triangles MBCMBC and BCPBCP are congruent. Since CMCM is both a median and a bisector, the triangle ABCABC is isosceles at CC, that is, the sides BCBC and ACAC are equal. Then ABCABC is equilateral and the angle sought has measure equal to 6060^\circ.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from it; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.