In the triangle , is a midpoint of the altitude and is a centre of the circumscribed circle. A line perpendicular to the line passing through intersects and at and respectively. Prove that the midpoints of , and are collinear.
Ukrainian National Mathematical Olympiad
Solution
Define and as midpoints of and respectively. Then lies on the line due to its initial position. Note that projections of on the lines , and are points , and which lie on the Simson line (Fig 33). From this can be concluded that lies on the circumscribed circle of the .
Intersect a ray with the line in a point . Observe that as they have the same angles. Also, , so and are respective vertices of the similar triangles. Since , we have that . Hence, points and are symmetric over .
Name midpoints of and as and respectively. Define as a symmetric point of over . Therefore, can deduce that
which means that . Let be a midpoint of the . From , we have that the midpoints of the and coincide, so is also the midpoint of the . From the previously described similarity we get that (an angle between a median and a side) and (midline). Similarly,
. From the angle sum we conclude that and