1996 AIME Problems/Problem 15
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Problem
In parallelogram
, let
be the intersection of diagonals
and
. Angles
and
are each twice as large as angle
, and angle
is
times as large as angle
. Find the greatest integer that does not exceed
.
Contents |
Solution
Solution 1 (trignometry)

Let
. Then
,
, and
. Since
is a parallelogram, it follows that
. By the Law of Sines on
,

Dividing the two equalities yields
Pythagorean and product-to-sum identities yield
and the double and triple angle (
) formulas further simplify this to
The only value of
that fits in this context comes from
. The answer is
.
Solution 2 (trignometry)
Define
as above. Since
, it follows that
, and so
. The Law of Sines on
yields that
Expanding using the sine double and triple angle formulas, we have
By the quadratic formula, we have
, so
(as the other roots are too large to make sense in context). The answer follows as above.
Solution 3
We will focus on
. Let
, so
. Draw the perpendicular from
intersecting
at
. Without loss of generality, let
. Then
, since
is the circumcenter of
. Then
.
By the Exterior Angle Theorem,
and
. That implies that
. That makes
. Then since by AA (
and reflexive on
),
.

Then by the Pythagorean Theorem,
. That makes
equilateral. Then
. The answer follows as above.
See also
| 1996 AIME (Problems • Resources) | ||
| Preceded by Problem 14 | Followed by Final Problem | |
| 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 | ||









