Given a triangle with , let and be the midpoints of and , respectively. The perpendicular bisector of meets at and the line parallel to and passing through the point intersects at a point . For a point on the line segment , let be the orthocenter of the triangle . The line segments and meet at a point and the lines and meet at a point . Let be the intersection point of and . Show that if and only if the points are concyclic.
Solution
Let be the circumcenter of the triangle , and let be the intersection point of the line and the side . Note that the points and the foot of the perpendicular from to are on the circle with a diameter , and thus . Since and is the midpoint of , , and so , which along with induce that the triangles and are similar to each other. Therefore, for the feet of the perpendiculars from to and , . Let be the foot of the perpendicular from to . Then and
It follows that . Hence is similar to , and thus . Since is parallel to , , Thereby . Now, since , , which along with implies that the points and lie on the circle with a diameter .
Suppose , in which case is the circumcenter of , . From the fact we proved above, and lie on the circle with a diameter . Since the circumcenter of is the orthocenter of , is orthogonal to . But is parallel to , and so is orthogonal to . Thus . Note that are concyclic, and thus , from which we can conclude . This implies that are concyclic.
Conversely, suppose are concyclic. Since and lie on the circle with a diameter , . It can be easily seen that , and so is parallel to . It follows that and are orthogonal to each other, thereby and being parallel to each other. Therefore, , which implies and .