Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /1 of 11

Geometry Difficulty 4.9 AIME Prove it Singapore

Let OO be a point inside a triangle ABCABC such that BOC=90\angle BOC = 90^\circ and BAO=BCO\angle BAO = \angle BCO. Prove that OMN=90\angle OMN = 90^\circ, where MM, NN are the midpoints of ACAC and BCBC respectively.

Solution

Extend COCO to a point DD such that CO=ODCO = OD. Since BOC=90\angle BOC = 90^\circ, the triangles BOCBOC and BODBOD are congruent. Let ω1\omega_1 be the circumcircle of the triangle BODBOD. Since BDO=BCO=BAO\angle BDO = \angle BCO = \angle BAO, the point AA lies on ω1\omega_1. As MM, OO, NN are the midpoints of CACA, CDCD, CBCB respectively, the homothety centered at CC with similitude ratio 12\frac{1}{2} maps ω1\omega_1 to the circumcircle ω2\omega_2 of the triangle MONMON. As DBDB is a diameter of ω1\omega_1, ONON is a diameter of ω2\omega_2. Thus OMN=90\angle OMN = 90^\circ.
Figure 1

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.