Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.6 AIME, harder Prove it Italy

Problem:

Let ABCABC be an acute triangle. Let AMAM, BNBN and CLCL be the medians, which intersect at the centroid GG. Let MM', NN' and LL' be the midpoints of AGAG, BGBG and CGCG, respectively. Show that the six points MM, MM', NN, NN', LL, LL' lie on a circle if and only if ABCABC is equilateral.

Solution

Solution:

We observe that, considering the median AMAM, the three segments AMAM', MGM'G and GMGM are equal to one another, since the centroid divides the median into two segments one twice the other and MM' is by construction the midpoint of the longer of the two, AGAG. An analogous result holds for the other two medians.

Suppose we have an equilateral triangle, then the three medians are equal to one another, so the points MM, MM', NN, NN', LL, LL' are equidistant from GG, that is, they lie on a circle centered at GG.

Suppose now that the six points MM, MM', NN, NN', LL, LL' lie on a circle with center OO. This point OO lies on the perpendicular bisectors of the three segments MMMM', NNNN' and LLLL' and, since GG is the midpoint of each of them, GG and OO lie simultaneously on the perpendicular bisectors of these segments. Since the three perpendicular bisectors are distinct, it follows that GG and OO must coincide. But then GM=GN=GLGM = GN = GL, being radii of the same circle, and therefore the three medians of the triangle ABCABC, which as stated earlier have length 3GM3GM, 3GN3GN, 3GL3GL, are equal to one another. A triangle in which all the medians are equal is equilateral, since for every pair of equal medians it is isosceles on the two sides to which the medians are relative.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from it; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.