A point lies on a line segment between and and circles are drawn having and as diameters. A common tangent to both circles touches the circle with as diameter at and the circle with as diameter at .
Prove that , and the common tangent to both circles at all meet at a single point which lies on the circumference of the circle with as diameter.
Solution
Let and intersect at and let and be the centres of the circles. Join , , , and and note the circles touch at . Let meet at . Since and are both perpendicular to , is parallel to and so which implies that triangles and are similar since both triangles are isosceles. It follows that .
Since (angle in semicircle), we have , hence . Also (angle in semicircle).
Because , we also have , which shows that lies on the circumference of the circle on as diameter. In addition is a rectangle and since the diagonals of a rectangle bisect each other , hence lies on the radical axis of the two circles and so does . This means that , and so as well, is the common tangent at . This completes the proof.
Let be the intersection point of the lines and .
Because is a tangent to the circle with diameter , the Alternate Segment Theorem gives . The angle is a right angle, because is standing on a diameter. Hence, .
Working with the circle of diameter we obtain in a similar way and .
Considering triangle we now obtain
Using the angle sum in triangle this implies , i.e. is a right angle. This shows that is on the circle that has as a diameter. This also shows that is a rectangle, which implies that .
Together with , which we have seen above, we now obtain
From triangle we now see that , hence is on the common tangent to both circles at .
Let be the intersection point of the lines and .
The angles and are standing on diameters, hence these are right angles. Therefore, the quadrilateral is cyclic and so
Because is a tangent to the circle with diameter , the Alternate Segment Theorem gives . Similarly, . Combined with the equations above, we obtain
which shows that the triangles , and are similar. As a consequence, . Because , these three angles are right angles. This implies that is on the circle with diameter and is on the common tangent to both circles at .
Let be the intersection point of the line and the common tangent at of the circles with diameters and . Let be the intersection point of and . Because tangents from a point to a circle are of equal length, we have and , hence is the circumcentre of triangle . As is on , is a right angle. This implies that .
The angles and are standing on diameters, hence these are right angles. Therefore, .
Because is a tangent to the circles with diameters and , the Alternate Segment Theorem gives and . Together with equations obtained earlier, we now have and .
Since is perpendicular to , we also have from which we obtain . This equality implies that is on the circumcircle of triangle . So, is the intersection point of the common tangent at and the circumcircle of triangle .
We now let be the intersection point of the line and the common tangent at of the circles with diameters and . We do not know at this stage if , as indicated in the diagram.
From the equations obtained above and we obtain . This equality implies that is on the circumcircle of triangle . So, is the intersection point of the common tangent at and the circumcircle of triangle , which means that . This proves that , and the common tangent at are concurrent.
To finish, we just need to note that from the equations obtained before, and this implies that the point is on the circle with diameter .
Let be one of the intersection points of the circle with diameter and the common tangent at of the circles with diameters and . Connect to and let be the intersection point of this line with the circle that has diameter . Connect to and let be the intersection point of this line with the circle that has diameter . We wish to prove that and . This follows when we have shown that is a common tangent to the circles with diameters and .
To prove this, we first notice that, since , and are right angles, we have and .
Because is the radical axis of the circles with diameters and , the point has the same power with respect to these two circles, that is and so
which implies that triangles and are similar in such a way that
Using the initially noticed equalities, we see now that
The converse of the Alternate Segment Theorem implies now that is tangent to the circles with diameters and . This shows that and and finishes the proof.