Mock AIME 4 2006-2007 Problems/Problem 15
Contents
Problem
Triangle has sides
,
, and
of length 43, 13, and 48, respectively. Let
be the circle circumscribed around
and let
be the intersection of
and the perpendicular bisector of
that is not on the same side of
as
. The length of
can be expressed as
, where
and
are positive integers and
is not divisible by the square of any prime. Find the greatest integer less than or equal to
.
Best Solution
We set up a trivial coordinate bash. Let A = 0,0, C = 48,0, B = 83/2, 13sqrt3/2. We find the coordinates of the circumcenter to be 24, -11sqrt3/3. The radius is 43sqrt3.Then the coordinate of point D are 24, -18sqrt3. The answer is then 6 + sqrt43, which yields 12.
Solution 1
The perpendicular bisector of any chord of any circle passes through the center of that circle. Let be the midpoint of
, and
be the length of the radius of
. By the Power of a Point Theorem,
or
. By the Pythagorean Theorem,
.
Let's compute the circumradius : By the Law of Cosines,
. By the Law of Sines,
so
.
Now we can use this to compute and thus
. By the quadratic formula,
. (We only take the positive sign because angle
is obtuse so
is the longer of the two segments into which the chord
divides the diameter.) Then
so
, and
so the answer is
.
Solution 2
Let angle =
, angle
, and
. Since ABCD is a cyclic quadrilateral,
degrees. Using the Law of Cosines,
, so
. Since
, then
is
. Using the Law of Cosines on triangle ADC,
. Solving for
, we get
which is between
and
, so the answer is
.