Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /4 of 18

Geometry Difficulty 5.2 AIME, harder Prove it Austria

Let ABCDEFABCDEF be a regular hexagon with sidelength ss. The points PP and QQ are on the diagonals BDBD and DFDF, respectively, such that BP=DQ=sBP = DQ = s.
Prove that the three points CC, PP and QQ are on a line.

Solution

Figure 1

Figure 1: Problem 2

Solution:

Our strategy is to compute the angles DCQ\angle DCQ and DCP\angle DCP to check that they are equal.

The interior angles of a regular hexagon equal 120120^\circ. The triangle DEFDEF is isosceles and therefore, we get DFE=EDF=30\angle DFE = \angle EDF = 30^\circ. This implies QDC=90\angle QDC = 90^\circ, and since the triangle QDCQDC is also isosceles, we also get
DCQ=45. \angle DCQ = 45^\circ.
The triangle CBPCBP is isosceles and analogously to the above, we get CBP=CBD=30\angle CBP = \angle CBD = 30^\circ. Therefore, we obtain
PCB=(18030):2=75and, finally,DCP=12075=45. \angle PCB = (180^\circ - 30^\circ) : 2 = 75^\circ \quad \text{and, finally,} \quad \angle DCP = 120^\circ - 75^\circ = 45^\circ.
So DCQ=DCP\angle DCQ = \angle DCP which implies that CC, PP and QQ lie on a line.

(Walther Janous) \square

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 and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.