Bunuel
In triangle ABC above, if AD=BC ,what is the value of x?
(1) D is the midpoint of side AC.
(2) The angle ABC is a right angle.
Great question!!
Important: Even though we aren't provided any angles, we can still label many of the angles in the diagram.
Since angles on a line must add to 180°, ∠ADB =
(180 - 2x)°Since angles in ∆ADB must add to 180°, ∠BAD =
x°Since ∆ADB has two equal angles (of
x°), the triangle is an isosceles triangle which means
side BD = side AD Since side BD = side BC, we have an isosceles triangle which means ∠DCB =
2x°, and since all angles must add to 180 degrees, we can see that ∠BDC =
(180 - 4x)°Now that we filled in so much information, the two statements should be relatively easy to analyze....
Target question: What is the value of x? Statement 1: D is the midpoint of side AC.This means
side DC = side AD At this point we can see that ∆BDC is an equilateral triangle, which means each angle must be 60°
This means 2x° = 60°, which means
x = 30Since we can answer the
target question with certainty, statement 1 is SUFFICIENT
Statement 2: ∠ABC is a right angle.Since the angles in ∆ABC must add to 180 degrees, we can conclude that ∠A + ∠C = 90°
In other words, x° + 2x° = 90°
Simplify: 3x° = 90°, which means
x = 30Since we can answer the
target question with certainty, statement 2 is SUFFICIENT
Answer: D
Cheers,
Brent