Given a triangle $ABC$ with angle $ABC=120^\circ$, side $AB =10$ cm and median $BM =2$ cm, what is the length of $BC$

euclidean-geometrygeometrytriangles

Given a triangle $ABC$ with angle $ABC=120^\circ$, side $AB =10$ cm and median $BM =2$ cm, what is the length of $BC$?

Construction of extended median

Above I have attached a picture of what my approach to it was. I extedended the median $BM$ by $2$ times and obtained parallelogram $ABCD$. We then have $\angle BAD=60^\circ$.

Letting $\angle ADB=\theta$ and using the Sine Rule, I get
$$\frac{\sin(60^\circ)}{4}=\frac{\sin(\theta)}{10}$$

However, this does not seem to yield any real value for $\theta$. I was going to continue by then finding $\angle ABD$ and again applying the sine rule to find $AD$. Where did I go wrong in order to not obtain a real value for $\theta$?

Best Answer

Another way.

Let $BC=x$.

Thus, by law of cosines for $\Delta ADB$ we obtain: $$x^2+100-2x\cdot10\cdot\frac{1}{2}=16.$$ Can you end it now?

I also got that it's impossible.