2018 AMC 12A Problems/Problem 20

Problem

Triangle $ABC$ is an isosceles right triangle with $AB=AC=3$ . Let $M$ be the midpoint of hypotenuse $\overline{BC}$ . Points $I$ and $E$ lie on sides $\overline{AC}$ and $\overline{AB}$ , respectively, so that $AI>AE$ and $AIME$ is a cyclic quadrilateral. Given that triangle $EMI$ has area $2$ , the length $CI$ can be written as $\frac{a-\sqrt{b}}{c}$ , where $a$ , $b$ , and $c$ are positive integers and $b$ is not divisible by the square of any prime. What is the value of $a+b+c$ ?

$\textbf{(A) }9 \qquad \textbf{(B) }10 \qquad \textbf{(C) }11 \qquad \textbf{(D) }12 \qquad \textbf{(E) }13 \qquad$

Solution

Observe that $\triangle{EMI}$ is isosceles right ( $M$ is the midpoint of diameter arc $EI$ ), so $MI=2,MC=\frac{3}{\sqrt{2}}$ . With $\angle{MCI}=45^\circ$ , we can use Law of Cosines to determine that $CI=\frac{3\pm\sqrt{7}}{2}$ . The same calculations hold for $BE$ also, and since $CI<BE$ , we deduce that $CI$ is the smaller root, giving the answer of $\boxed{12}$ . (trumpeter)

2018 AMC 12A (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 19	Followed by Problem 21
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All AMC 12 Problems and Solutions

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2018 AMC 12A Problems/Problem 20

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