2008 AMC 12A Problems/Problem 24
Contents
[hide]Problem
Triangle has and . Point is the midpoint of . What is the largest possible value of ?
Solution
Solution 1
unitsize(12mm); pair C=(0,0), B=(4 * dir(60)), A = (8,0), D=(2 * dir(60)); pair E=(1,0), F=(2,0); draw(C--B--A--C); draw(A--D);draw(D--E);draw(B--F); dot(A);dot(B);dot(C);dot(D);dot(E);dot(F); label("\(C\)",C,SW); label("\(B\)",B,N); label("\(A\)",A,SE); label("\(D\)",D,NW); label("\(E\)",E,S); label("\(F\)",F,S); label("\(60^\circ\)",C+(.1,.1),ENE); label("\(2\)",1*dir(60),NW); label("\(2\)",3*dir(60),NW); label("\(\theta\)",(7,.4)); label("\(1\)",(.5,0),S); label("\(1\)",(1.5,0),S); label("\(x-2)",(5,0),S); (Error making remote request. Unknown error_msg)
Let . Then , and since and , we have
With calculus, taking the derivative and setting equal to zero will give the maximum value of . Otherwise, we can apply AM-GM:
Thus, the maximum is at .
Solution 2
We notice that is strictly increasing on the interval (if , then it is impossible for ), so we want to maximize .
Consider the circumcircle of and let it meet again at . Any point between and on line is inside this circle, so it follows that . Therefore to maximize , the circumcircle of must be tangent to at . By PoP we find that .
Now our computations are straightforward:
See also
2008 AMC 12A (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | |
Preceded by Problem 23 |
Followed by Problem 25 |
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 12 Problems and Solutions |
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