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Geometry Difficulty 6.7 National Olympiad Prove it Estonia

Let ABCABC be an acute triangle and DD an interior point of its side ACAC. We call a side of the triangle ABDABD friendly, if the excircle of ABDABD tangent to that side has its center on the circumcircle of ABCABC. Prove that there are exactly two friendly sides of ABDABD if and only if BD=DC|BD| = |DC|.

Solution

Let EE, FF and GG be the centers of excircles touching BDBD, ADAD and ABAB respectively, and let ω\omega be the circumcircle of ABCABC (see Fig. 5). To prove the assertion of the problem, we will show that FF and GG cannot both lie on ω\omega and that Eω    BD=DC    FωE \in \omega \iff |BD| = |DC| \iff F \in \omega.

As AFAF and AGAG are bisectors of the two complementary angles of BADBAD, the point AA lies on the segment FGFG. Thus, only one of the rays AFAF and AGAG can cut the circle ω\omega again, and therefore only one of FF and GG can lie on ω\omega.

To show that EωE \in \omega iff BD=DC|BD| = |DC|, we first note that EE lies on ω\omega iff CAE=CBE\angle CAE = \angle CBE. Since CAE=12BAD=12(πADBABD)=12(π(π2BDE)(π2DBE))=BDE+DBEπ2=π2BED\angle CAE = \frac{1}{2}\angle BAD = \frac{1}{2}(\pi - \angle ADB - \angle ABD) = \frac{1}{2}(\pi - (\pi - 2\angle BDE) - (\pi - 2\angle DBE)) = \angle BDE + \angle DBE - \frac{\pi}{2} = \frac{\pi}{2} - \angle BED, we see that EωE \in \omega is equivalent to CBE=π2BED\angle CBE = \frac{\pi}{2} - \angle BED, i.e BCBC and DEDE being perpendicular. Since DEDE is the bisector of BDCBDC, this occurs iff BD=DC|BD| = |DC|.

Figure 1
Fig. 5

It remains to show that BD=DC|BD| = |DC| iff FωF \in \omega. Point FF lies on ω\omega iff AFB=BCD\angle AFB = \angle BCD. Using the fact that BAF=BAD+12(πBAD)=12(π+BAD)\angle BAF = \angle BAD + \frac{1}{2}(\pi - \angle BAD) = \frac{1}{2}(\pi + \angle BAD), we get AFB=πABFBAF=πABDBAD2=ADB2=BCD+CBD2\angle AFB = \pi - \angle ABF - \angle BAF = \frac{\pi - \angle ABD - \angle BAD}{2} = \frac{\angle ADB}{2} = \frac{\angle BCD + \angle CBD}{2}. Thus AFB=BCD\angle AFB = \angle BCD is equivalent to BCD=CBD\angle BCD = \angle CBD, i.e., BD=DC|BD| = |DC|.

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