2018 AMC 10A Problems/Problem 16
Right triangle has leg lengths
and
. Including
and
, how many line segments with integer length can be drawn from vertex
to a point on hypotenuse
?
Solution
[asy]
pair A, B, C, E, P;
A=(-20, 0);
B=origin;
C=(0,21);
E=(-21, 20);
P=extension(B,E, A, C);
draw(A--B--C--cycle);
draw(B--P);
dot("", A, SW);
dot("
", B, SE);
dot("
", C, NE);
dot("
", P, S);
[/asy]
As the problem has no diagram, we draw a diagram. The hypotenuse has length
. Let
be the foot of the altitude from
to
. Note that
is the shortest possible length of any segment. Writing the area of the triangle in two ways, we can solve for
, which is between
and
.
Let the line segment be , with
on
. As you move
along the hypotenuse from
to
, the length of
strictly decreases, hitting all the integer values from
(IVT). Similarly, moving
from
to
hits all the integer values from
. This is a total of
line segments.
(asymptote diagram added by elements2015)
See Also
2018 AMC 10A (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 15 |
Followed by Problem 17 | |
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 | ||
All AMC 10 Problems and Solutions |
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