Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /1 of 65

Geometry Difficulty 4.5 AIME Prove it Romania

Let ABCABC be an acute triangle and D(BC)D \in (BC), E(AD)E \in (AD) be mobile points. The circumcircle of triangle CDECDE meets the median from CC of the triangle ABCABC at FF. Prove that the circumcenter of triangle AEFAEF lies on a fixed line.

Solution

The quadrilateral EFDCEFDC is cyclic, hence FEDFCD\angle FED \equiv \angle FCD. Let PP be the reflection of point CC in the midpoint of the segment line [AB][AB]; clearly APBCAP \parallel BC and FCDFPA\angle FCD \equiv \angle FPA.

It follows that FPAFED\angle FPA \equiv \angle FED, which means that the quadrilateral FEAPFEAP is cyclic. This shows that the circumcenter AEFAEF lies on the perpendicular bisector of the segment line [AP][AP] (which is a fixed line).

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.