Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /409 of 860

Geometry Difficulty 5.1 AIME, harder Find the answer

Let PABCP A B C be a tetrahedron such that APB=APC=BPC=90,ABC=30\angle A P B=\angle A P C=\angle B P C=90^{\circ}, \angle A B C=30^{\circ}, and AP2A P^{2} equals the area of triangle ABCA B C. Compute tanACB\tan \angle A C B.

A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.

Solution

Observe that 12ABACsinBAC=[ABC]=AP2=12(AB2+AC2BC2)=ABACcosBAC\begin{aligned} \frac{1}{2} \cdot A B \cdot A C \cdot \sin \angle B A C & =[A B C]=A P^{2} \\ & =\frac{1}{2}\left(A B^{2}+A C^{2}-B C^{2}\right) \\ & =A B \cdot A C \cdot \cos \angle B A C \end{aligned} so tanBAC=2\tan \angle B A C=2. Also, we have tanABC=13\tan \angle A B C=\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}}. Also, for any angles α,β,γ\alpha, \beta, \gamma summing to 180180^{\circ}, one can see that tanα+tanβ+tanγ=tanαtanβtanγ\tan \alpha+\tan \beta+\tan \gamma=\tan \alpha \cdot \tan \beta \cdot \tan \gamma. Thus we have tanACB+2+13=\tan \angle A C B+2+\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}}= tanACB213\tan \angle A C B \cdot 2 \cdot \frac{1}{\sqrt{3}}, so tanACB=8+53\tan \angle A C B=8+5 \sqrt{3}.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

Source: Omni-MATH, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.