Circling The Foot

Geometry Level 5

An isosceles triangle A B C ABC has side lengths C A = C B CA=CB . X X is a point on the circumcircle of triangle A B C ABC , lying on the arc between A A and B B not containing C C , such that X A = 100 XA=100 and X B = 300 XB=300 . Let D D be the foot of the perpendicular from C C to X B XB . What is the length of X D XD ?


The answer is 200.

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1 solution

Calvin Lin Staff
May 13, 2014

Construct the point Y Y on X B XB extended such that B Y BY = X A XA . Clearly C A X B CAXB is cyclic, so we have C A X = 18 0 C B X = C B Y \angle CAX = 180^\circ - \angle CBX = \angle CBY . Thus triangles C A X CAX and C B Y CBY are congruent by side-angle-side (with C A = C B CA = CB , X A = B Y XA = BY and C A X = C B Y \angle CAX = \angle CBY ). Therefore C X = C Y CX = CY and this implies that C X Y CXY is an isosceles triangle. Since D D is the foot of the perpendicular from C C to X B XB , D D is the midpoint of X Y XY . So X D = X Y 2 = X B + B Y 2 = 300 + 100 2 = 200 XD = \frac{XY}{2} = \frac{XB + BY}{2} = \frac{300 + 100}{2} = 200 .

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