Let be the centroid of a triangle . Consider two isosceles right-angled triangles and so that lies in the half-plane and lies in the half-plane . Finally, denote the centre of the side as and the centre of as . Determine all the possible values of the ratio .
First Round of the 73rd Czech and Slovak Mathematical Olympiad (take-home part)
Solution
We shall prove that the ratio has to be equal to .
First, we shall observe that the triangles and (coloured turquoise and yellow in the diagram) are similar, since
and by similarity of the triangles and , we have . The ratio of similarity has to be , since .
Since is a midpoint of and is the midpoint of , the triangles and are also similar. This tells us that and . Subtracting from the equality gives us and the equality of ratios can be rearranged to , so the
triangles BTK and DTE are similar. Therefore, the triangle DTE is also a right-angled isosceles triangle.
Finally, recall that since T is the centroid, we have AT = 2*TD*, so the desired ratio can be computed simply as
as desired.
Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track
puts 2,604 problems in a working order, from Junior Challenge level to the IMO shortlist.