Problem:
Let be an acute triangle. Let be the foot of the internal bisector from and the midpoint of . Let moreover be a point on the segment such that .
Prove that is perpendicular to .
Problem:
Let be an acute triangle. Let be the foot of the internal bisector from and the midpoint of . Let moreover be a point on the segment such that .
Prove that is perpendicular to .
Solution:
Since by hypothesis holds, the two triangles and are similar. Hence
Let be the foot of the perpendicular drawn from to . From now on we assume that lies between and . The other case, namely between and , is treated analogously. Since is the midpoint of the hypotenuse in the right triangle , we have . Hence the previous equality of ratios becomes
from which we deduce the similarity of the two triangles and . From this similarity follows the equality , but , where in the second equality we use that the triangle is isosceles, since is a right triangle and is the midpoint of the hypotenuse, and in the third we use that the sum of the angles of the triangle is using the standard triangle notation.
Hence since by hypothesis. Hence and therefore is cyclic and from this we deduce which is what we wanted.
Solution:
Let be the intersection, different from , of the circumscribed circle of with the segment . We have
where the first equality holds because is cyclic, the second holds by hypothesis and the third because is the bisector. Hence the triangle is isosceles. Let be the midpoint of . Since is isosceles, . Moreover, by Thales' theorem, and hence .
Let be the foot of the altitude drawn from to . From now on we assume that lies between and . The other case, namely between and , is treated analogously. Since we have and hence the quadrilateral is cyclic.
We show that is also cyclic. Indeed , where the last equality holds because is cyclic; , where the second equality holds because is cyclic and the third because the triangle is right-angled. Hence is cyclic since we have shown
Finally we show that is a cyclic quadrilateral. Indeed
where the second equality holds because is cyclic and the fourth because is cyclic.
From the cyclicity of we deduce . In the triangle we have using the standard triangle notation. Hence and since by hypothesis. Hence and therefore is cyclic and from this we deduce which is what we wanted.