Let be an acute triangle and be the perpendicular foot at the side from . Let and be points on the segments and , and be the perpendicular feet at from and respectively. Let be the perpendicular foot at the segment from . Suppose that are concurrent. Show that .
Solution
Suppose are concurrent at . Let be the point on the line such that . We only work on the configuration as shown since the other cases are similar.
Firstly, by the parallel lines and , we have and . Thus, we have
By the angle bisector theorem, it suffices to prove . Equivalently, we need to prove .
By similar triangles, we have . Together with the included angles , we have . This implies , and hence .

Note that are concyclic since . This yields
and so
It follows that .
Next, note that . This implies . By similar triangles, we obtain
Therefore, we have . Thus, is the perpendicular bisector of , and hence as desired.
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.