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Belarusian Mathematical Olympiad

Geometry Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Prove it Belarus

Let MM be the midpoint of the side ABAB of the acute-angled non-isosceles triangle ABCABC, HH be the orthocenter of ABCABC, and II be the incenter of ABCABC.
Prove that if MM, II, and HH are collinear, then the length of the segment CHCH is equal to the length of the radius of the incircle of the triangle ABCABC.
(Folklore)

Solution

Let Γ\Gamma be incircle of the triangle ABCABC. Let KK be the point of tangency of Γ\Gamma and the side ABAB. Let the line CLCL meet the side ABAB at NN. It is easy to see that AK=BNAK = BN (it suffices to consider the homothety with the center CC which transform Γ\Gamma into excircle touching ABAB at NN, and use the power-point theorem). Since MM is the midpoint of ABAB, we have KM=AM−AK=BM−BN=MNKM = AM - AK = BM - BN = MN. So IM∥LNIM \parallel LN. If H,I,MH, I, M are collinear, then HI∥CLHI \parallel CL, and since CH⊥ABCH \perp AB and LI⊥ABLI \perp AB, we see that CH∥LICH \parallel LI. Therefore, CHILCHIL is a parallelogram. It follows that CH=LICH = LI. But LI=rLI = r, where rr is the radius of incircle of ABCABC. Thus, CH=rCH = r.

Figure 1

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