2007 AIME II Problems/Problem 3
Problem
Square has side length
, and points
and
are exterior to the square such that
and
. Find
.
Contents
Solution
Solution 1
Let , so that
. By the diagonal,
.
The sum of the squares of the sides of a parallelogram is the sum of the squares of the diagonals.
Solution 2
Extend and
to their points of intersection. Since
and are both
right triangles, we can come to the conclusion that the two new triangles are also congruent to these two (use ASA, as we know all the sides are
and the angles are mostly complementary). Thus, we create a square with sides
.
is the diagonal of the square, with length
; the answer is
.
Solution 3
A slightly more analytic/brute-force approach:
Drop perpendiculars from and
to
and
, respectively; construct right triangle
with right angle at K and
. Since
, we have
. Similarly,
. Since
, we have
.
Now, we see that . Also,
. By the Pythagorean Theorem, we have
. Therefore,
.
Solution 4
Based on the symmetry, we know that is a reflection of
across the center of the square, which we will denote as
. Since
and
are right, we can conclude that figure
is a cyclic quadrilateral. Pythagorean Theorem yields that
. Now, using Ptolemy's Theorem, we get that
Now, since we stated in the first step that
is a reflection of
across
, we can say that
. This gives that
AWD with this bash solution
Solution 5 (Ptolemy's Theorem)
Drawing , it clearly passes through the center of
. Letting this point be
, we note that
and
are congruent cyclic quadrilaterals, and that
Now, from Ptolemy's,
. Since
, the answer is
Solution 5
Coordinate bash
See also
2007 AIME II (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 2 |
Followed by Problem 4 | |
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 | ||
All AIME Problems and Solutions |
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