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Geometry Difficulty 6.5 National Olympiad Prove it Ireland

Let ABCABC be an isosceles triangle with AB=AC|AB| = |AC|. The points BB' and CC' are on the line BCBC (extended in both directions) such that BB is between BB' and CC and CC is between BB and CC'. Moreover, BBAB'BA and ACCACC' are isosceles triangles. Let XX be a point on the line BCBC such that BB' is not between XX and BB.
Prove that AX=BX|AX| = |BX| if and only if 1AB=1BX+1BC\frac{1}{|AB|} = \frac{1}{|B'X|} + \frac{1}{|BC'|}.

Solution

Because BB=BA=AC=CC|B'B| = |BA| = |AC| = |CC'|, we have BX=AB+BX|B'X| = |AB| + |BX| and BC=BC+AB|BC'| = |BC| + |AB|. For the first equation we used that BB is between BB' and XX. To see this, we have to exclude that XX is between BB and BB' (by assumption, BB' is not between XX and BB). If AX=BX|AX| = |BX|, XX cannot be between BB and BB', because the angle CBA\angle CBA is acute. If 1AB=1BX+1BC\frac{1}{|AB|} = \frac{1}{|B'X|} + \frac{1}{|BC'|}, we have BX>AB=BB|B'X| > |AB| = |B'B|, hence XX is not between BB and BB'.
Figure 1
We see now that the equation 1AB=1BX+1BC\frac{1}{|AB|} = \frac{1}{|B'X|} + \frac{1}{|BC'|} is equivalent to
1AB=1AB+BX+1BC+AB \frac{1}{|AB|} = \frac{1}{|AB| + |BX|} + \frac{1}{|BC| + |AB|} which rewrites as
(AB+BX)(BC+AB)=AB(AB+BX)+AB(BC+AB) (|AB| + |BX|)(|BC| + |AB|) = |AB|(|AB| + |BX|) + |AB|(|BC| + |AB|)
which simplifies to BCBX=AB2|BC| \cdot |BX| = |AB|^2, or equivalently ABBC=BXAB\frac{|AB|}{|BC|} = \frac{|BX|}{|AB|}. Because the triangles ABXABX and ABCABC have a common angle at BB, this last equality is equivalent to these two triangles being similar with sides ABAB and BXBX in triangle ABXABX corresponding to sides BCBC and ABAB in triangle ABCABC. Because ABC\triangle ABC is isosceles, the same is then true for the triangle ABXABX, hence AX=BX|AX| = |BX|. On the other hand, if AX=BX|AX| = |BX|, triangle ABXABX is isosceles and because it shares an angle with ABC\triangle ABC at BB, both triangles are similar. This finishes the proof of the desired equivalence.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.