Suppose an acute scalene triangle has incentre and incircle touching at . Let be the antipode of in the circumcircle of . Point is chosen on the internal angle bisector of such that . Let be midpoint of arc , and let be the midpoint of . Prove that .
Solutions — 4
Solution 1
Let be the midpoint of arc . Note that are collinear; further, because they are reflections in the circumcenter of . Therefore . So it is sufficient to prove that ; in fact we will prove that . Note that because and perpendicular from to are isogonal. Therefore it is sufficient to prove that
Let denote the inradius and circumradius of respectively. Note that , , and . Also note that is the power of w.r.t. , which is . Therefore
as required. □
Solution 2
Let the incircle touch and at and respectively. Let be the reflection of across , and let be the reflection of across . Let be the -excentre of . Let and be the midpoints of and , and let be the midpoint of arc . Let be the reflection of across .
Claim 1 is the circumcenter of
Proof. Since , the perpendicular bisector of is the angle bisector of or the line . Similarly, is the perpendicular bisector of . Thus the two perpendicular bisectors of and meet at . □
Claim 2
Proof. Observe that , so and . Dilating by 2 from gives us the desired result. As a corollary, observe that is perpendicular to . □
Claim 3
Proof. Let and be the altitudes from to and . Observe that which gives the desired result. □
Claim 4 is the midpoint of .
Proof. Observe that are collinear, and that is the perpendicular bisector of . This implies , and that is the circumcentre of . Since , is the midpoint of . □
The key idea is that . On the other hand, we also have and , so . This proves the problem. □
Solution 3
WLOG assume . Let be the midpoint of . Then is clearly a rectangle, so
Let be the -excenter. Homothety with ratio 2 at gives
Therefore it is sufficient to prove that . We use complex numbers for this.
Let be the unit circle, and let coordinates of be respectively. Then it is well known that coordinates of are respectively. Coordinate of is by reflection in the origin. Further, coordinate of is by midpoint formula. By projection formula, we get the coordinate of as . Also, is the same as directed angle from to , so we have to prove
Putting the coordinates in, this is equivalent to proving . If we let be that quantity, we have
Hence , as needed. □
Solution 4
WLOG assume . Let be midpoint of arc , and let intersect again at .
Claim 1 are collinear.
Proof. Consider an inversion with center and radius . are fixed since . The inversion interchanges line and , so . Also note that and , so
Hence are collinear. □
Let be the midpoint of .
Claim 2 MV and ZU intersect on .
Proof. We use phantom points and cross-ratios. Let intersect at respectively. Since is midpoint of , we have where is the point at infinity along . Since , projecting from onto we get . Similarly, since is midpoint of , we have where is the point at infinity along . Since , projecting from onto we get .
Therefore , as required. □
Note that is a rectangle, and , so
as required. □