Bisected Slopes

Geometry Level 4

If a line with a slope of 300 300 bisects the angle of two other lines with integer slopes, find the sum of the two missing slopes.


The answer is 13500600.

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2 solutions

Aaghaz Mahajan
Jun 25, 2020

Let the two integer slopes be a a and b b . WLOG let a > b a>b . Let them be bisected by the line having slope 300 300 . Now, let the angle between the former two lines be θ \theta . Using standard formulae, we have

tan θ 2 = a 300 1 + 300 a = 300 b 1 + 300 b \tan\frac{\theta}{2}=\frac{a-300}{1+300a}=\frac{300-b}{1+300b}

Hence, we get after some manipulations, 600 a b 89999 ( a + b ) = 600 600ab-89999\left(a+b\right)=600

To solve this, multiply 600 600 to both sides of the equation and let 600 a = x 600a=x and 600 b = y 600b=y .

So we simply need to find the integral solutions of the equation
( x 89999 ) ( y 89999 ) = 8100180001 \left(x-89999\right)\left(y-89999\right)=8100180001

We can simply start checking all possible integer solutions, but the first attempt will give the answer. Taking x = 90000 x=90000 and y = 8100270000 y=8100270000 we get the answer ( a , b ) = ( 150 , 13500450 ) \displaystyle \left(a,b\right)\ =\ \left(150,13500450\right)

Great solution! Note that 8100180001 = 9000 1 2 8100180001 = 90001^2 , and 90001 90001 is a prime number. So the only cases you need to check are x 89999 = ± 1 x - 89999 = \pm 1 , x 89999 = ± 90001 x - 89999 = \pm 90001 , and x 89999 = ± 9000 1 2 x - 89999 = \pm 90001^2 , which lead to 150 150 and 13500450 13500450 as the only possible slopes.

David Vreken - 11 months, 3 weeks ago

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OH yeah!! I should have seen that. It simply follows by expanding 60 0 2 + ( 30 0 2 1 ) 2 600^{2}+\left(300^{2}-1\right)^{2} . Well, guess I got lucky that I started checking from 1...

Aaghaz Mahajan - 11 months, 3 weeks ago

Let the missing slopes be m 1 m_1 and m 2 m_2 . Then

m 1 = 89999 m 2 + 600 600 m 2 89999 m_1=\dfrac {89999m_2+600}{600m_2-89999}

For integral value of m 1 m_1 , m 2 = 150 m_2=150 and then m 1 = 13500450 m_1=13500450 , so that the sum of the slopes is 13500600 \boxed {13500600} .

Can you (1) show how you derived that equation and (2) show that those two values are the only integral values? Otherwise this solution is incomplete.

David Vreken - 11 months, 3 weeks ago

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Yes, I have the same two questions

Mahdi Raza - 11 months, 3 weeks ago

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