Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Prove it Brazil

A ball moves endlessly on a circular billiard table. When it hits the edge it is reflected. Show that if it passes through a point on the table three times, then it passes through it infinitely many times.

Solution

Suppose ABAB and BCBC are two successive chords of the ball's path. Then by the reflection law ABO=OBC\angle ABO = \angle OBC. But OABOAB and OBCOBC are isosceles and so AOB=BOC\angle AOB = \angle BOC. Hence AB=BCAB = BC. So every chord of the path is the same length dd.

We now claim that through any given point PP inside the circle there are at most two chords length dd. Let ABAB and CDCD be a chord containing PP, with AP=aAP = a and CP=bCP = b. The power of PP with respect to the circle is PAPB=PCPD    a(da)=b(db)    a=bPA \cdot PB = PC \cdot PD \iff a(d-a) = b(d-b) \iff a = b or a+b=da+b = d. This means that PP always divides the chords containing it in two segments of fixed lengths aa and dad-a. Now if three chords passes through PP, the circle with center PP and radius aa would cut the circle of the billiard table three times, a contradiction.

Thus if the path passes through PP more than twice, then on two occasions it must be moving along the same chord ABAB. That implies that AOB\angle AOB is a rational multiple of 2π2\pi and hence the path will traverse ABAB repeatedly.

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