Difference between revisions of "1989 AIME Problems/Problem 6"
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Revision as of 16:39, 29 August 2019
Contents
[hide]Problem
Two skaters, Allie and Billie, are at points and , respectively, on a flat, frozen lake. The distance between and is meters. Allie leaves and skates at a speed of meters per second on a straight line that makes a angle with . At the same time Allie leaves , Billie leaves at a speed of meters per second and follows the straight path that produces the earliest possible meeting of the two skaters, given their speeds. How many meters does Allie skate before meeting Billie?
Solution
Label the point of intersection as . Since , and . According to the law of cosines,
Since we are looking for the earliest possible intersection, seconds are needed. Thus, meters is the solution.
Alternatively, we can drop an altitude from and arrive at the same answer.
Solution 2
Can someone please help me make an asymptote diagram for this?
draw((0,0)--(5,0)--(3.6,7)--cycle); draw((3.6,7)--(5,14)--(5,0)--cycle); label("$A$",(-0.5,-0.5),W); label("$B$",(7,-0.5),W); label("$P$",(3,7.5),W); label("$B'$",7,15),W); (Error making remote request. Unknown error_msg)
</asy>
Let the point of intersection be . We can draw a line that goes through and is parallel to . Letting this line be the axis, we can reflect over the axis to get . Note that as reflections preserve length, .
We then draw lines and . We can let the foot of the perpendicular from to be , and we can let the foot of the perpendicular from to be . In doing so, we have constructed rectangle .
By , we have and . Furthermore, we have triangle , so and . Since we have , . By Pythagoras, .
Then, we have . Since we know that , we get . Solving for , we get . Our answer is then equivalent to . Thus, meters is the solution. - Spacesam
Solution 3
We can define to be the time elapsed since both Allie and Billie moved away from points and respectfully. Also, set the point of intersection to be . Then we can produce the following diagram:
Now, if we drop an altitude from point, we get :
We know this from the triangle that is formed. From this we get that:
.
Therefore, we get that or . Since , we have that (since the problem asks for the quickest possible meeting point), so the distance Allie travels before meeting Billie would be meters.
~qwertysri987
See also
1989 AIME (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 5 |
Followed by Problem 7 | |
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 | ||
All AIME Problems and Solutions |
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