2023 AIME II Problems/Problem 12
Solution
Because
is the midpoint of
, following from the Steward's theorem,
.
Because
,
,
,
are concyclic,
,
.
Denote
.
In
, following from the law of sines,
Thus,
In
, following from the law of sines,
Thus,
Taking
, we get
In
, following from the law of sines,
Thus, Equations (2) and (3) imply
Next, we compute
and
.
We have
We have
Taking (5) and (6) into (4), we get
.
Therefore, the answer is
.
~Steven Chen (Professor Chen Education Palace, www.professorchenedu.com)
Solution 2
Define
to be the foot of the altitude from
to
. Furthermore, define
to be the foot of the altitude from
to
. From here, one can find
, either using the 13-14-15 triangle or by calculating the area of
two ways. Then, we find
and
using Pythagorean theorem. Let
. By AA similarity,
and
are similar. By similarity ratios,
Thus,
. Similarly,
. Now, we angle chase from our requirement to obtain new information.
Take the tangent of both sides to obtain
By the definition of the tangent function on right triangles, we have
,
, and
. By abusing the tangent angle addition formula, we can find that
By substituting
,
and using tangent angle subtraction formula we find that
Finally, using similarity formulas, we can find
. Plugging in
and
, we find that
Thus, our final answer is
.
~sigma