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Belarusian Mathematical Olympiad

Belarus geometry

Problem

Points and are the midpoints of the sides and of triangle , respectively. The equilateral triangles and are constructed on the sides and to the exterior of the triangle . Point is the midpoint of the segment . Find the value of the angle .
Solution
Answer: .

Let points , , and lie in the same half-plane with respect to the line . Let and be the midpoints of the segments and , respectively (see the Fig.). By condition, the triangle is equilateral and is the midpoint of the side , so . Therefore, the triangle is a right-angled triangle (the median is half as long as the side ) and . By condition, , so . By condition, the triangle is equilateral, then . Therefore, Since and are the midlines of the triangle , we have and , so is a parallelogram. Then Since is the midpoint of the side of the equilateral triangle , we have . Now from (2) it follows that:

In the similar way, we easily find that

Since is a parallelogram, we have Also . Therefore, , so, taking into account (3), we see that the triangles and are similar, hence , . Thus, In the same way, we get , since So , and then
Final answer
90°

Techniques

Angle chasingConstructions and loci