Let be a triangle and let denote the midpoint of the side . Suppose that there exist two points and interior to the sides and respectively, such that
where is the intersection point of the lines and . Show that
.
Solution
Step I: Reduce to the case when coincides with . The following provides two versions of this step:
Version 1: The line through parallel to intersects at a point and at a point . From the similar triangles and it follows that
and from the similar triangles and it follows that
Thus is equivalent to .


Version 2: Let be a line parallel to , with and on . Let be the intersection point of with . From the similar triangles and it follows that
and from the similar triangles and it follows that
Thus is the midpoint of if and only if is the midpoint of . Also, since the triangles and are similar, then is equivalent to .
Step II: With the notations from Step I, Version 1, prove that is the midpoint of and is the centroid of the triangle . The following provides two versions of this step:
Version 1: Menelaus' theorem for with secant line gives
Because and , it follows that and so is the midpoint of . Hence, is the centroid of .
Version 2: Let denote the midpoint of , and let be the intersection of with . We will prove using proof by contradiction. Assume they are different. The triangles and are similar since
and so and also is parallel to . Thus the triangles and are similar which implies
But this would imply that is parallel to which is a contradiction, since they meet at .
Step III: Because is the centroid of , we have and . Because , this implies and . Therefore, the triangles and are congruent, thus
|BC| = 2|BP| = 2|AQ| = |AC| .