Problem

1985 AHSME Problem 3

In right \triangle ABC with legs 5 and 12, arcs of circles are drawn, one with center A and radius 12, the other with center B and radius 5. They intersect the hypotenuse in M and N. Then MN has length

[asy] defaultpen(linewidth(0.7)+fontsize(10)); pair A=origin, B=(12,7), C=(12,0), M=12*dir(A--B), N=B+B.y*dir(B--A); real r=degrees(B); draw(A--B--C--cycle^^Arc(A,12,0,r)^^Arc(B,B.y,180+r,270)); pair point=incenter(A,B,C); label("$A$", A, dir(point--A)); label("$B$", B, dir(point--B)); label("$C$", C, dir(point--C)); label("$M$", M, dir(point--M)); label("$N$", N, dir(point--N)); label("$12$", (6,0), S); label("$5$", (12,3.5), E);[/asy]

\mathrm{(A)\ } 2 \qquad \mathrm{(B) \ }\frac{13}{5} \qquad \mathrm{(C) \ } 3 \qquad \mathrm{(D) \ } 4 \qquad \mathrm{(E) \ }\frac{24}{5}


Full credit goes to MAA for authoring these problems. These problems were taken on the AOPS website.


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