Let be a fixed acute-angled triangle. Consider some points and lying on the sides and , respectively, and let be the midpoint of . Let the perpendicular bisector of intersect the line at , and let the perpendicular bisector of intersect the lines and at and , respectively. We call the pair interesting, if the quadrilateral is cyclic.
Suppose that the pairs and are interesting. Prove that
Solutions — 2
Solution 1
Solution 1. For any interesting pair , we will say that the corresponding triangle is also interesting.
Let be an interesting triangle. Firstly, we prove that , which also means that the circumcircle of the triangle is tangent to the lines and .
Denote by the circle passing through the points , and . Let the line intersect the line and the circle (for the second time) at and , respectively (see Figure 1).
Since and is the midpoint of , is the midpoint of . Moreover, since and are symmetric to each other with respect to the line , we have . Thus the points and are symmetric to each other with respect to the perpendicular bisector of . Therefore .
Let be the point symmetric to with respect to . Then lies on the line , and we may assume that it lies on the ray . One has
(if , then the angle is understood to be the angle between and the tangent to at ). This means that the points , and are concyclic. Now, since is a parallelogram, we obtain . Since , we also have .
First method. We have just proved that all interesting triangles are similar to each other. This allows us to use the following lemma.
Lemma. Let be an arbitrary triangle. Choose two points and on the side , two points and on the side , and two points and on the side , in a way that the triangles and are similar. Then the six circumcircles of the triangles , , and meet at a common point . Moreover, is the centre of the spiral similarity that takes the triangle to the triangle .
Proof. Firstly, notice that for each , the circumcircles of the triangles , , and have a common point by Miquel's theorem. Moreover, we have
.
This yields that the points and correspond to each other in similar triangles and . Thus, if they coincide, then this common point is indeed the desired centre of a spiral similarity.
Finally, in order to show that , one may notice that (see Figure 2). Similarly, one has and . This yields .
Now, let and be the feet of the perpendiculars from and onto and , respectively, and let be the midpoint of (see Figure 3). Then is the circumcentre of the cyclic quadrilateral . Thus we obtain and , which yields . Similarly, we show that . Thus, all interesting triangles are similar to the triangle .
Figure 3
Figure 4
Denote now by the common point of the circumcircles of , , and . Let and be two interesting triangles. By the lemma, is the centre of any spiral similarity taking one of the triangles , , and to some other of them. Therefore the triangles and are similar, as well as the triangles and . Hence
Moreover, the equalities show that the point lies on the line (see Figure 4). Therefore the triangles and are similar, as well as the triangles and . This yields
which completes the solution.
Second method. Now we will start from the fact that is tangent to the lines and (see Figure 5). We prove that if is an interesting pair, then
Let be the intersection point of the segments and . The points , and are collinear, hence applying Pascal's theorem to the degenerated hexagon , we infer that lies on the circle .
Denote by the second intersection point of the circumcircle of the triangle with the line (see Figure 6). By Miquel's theorem, the points , and are concyclic. Therefore we obtain
On the other hand, , by the cosine law. Hence
which simplifies to the desired equality (1).
Let now and be two interesting pairs of points. Then we get
which gives the desired result.
Third method. Again, we make use of the fact that all interesting triangles are similar (and equi-oriented). Let us put the picture onto a complex plane such that is at the origin, and identify each point with the corresponding complex number.
Let be any interesting triangle. The equalities yield that the ratio is the same for all interesting triangles. This in turn means that the numbers , , and satisfy the linear equation
Now let us choose the points and on the rays and , respectively, so that (see Figure 7). Then each of the triangles and is similar to any interesting triangle, which also means that
Moreover, one has .
Since the points , and lie on , and , respectively, one gets
for some real , and . In view of (3), the equation (2) now reads , or
Since the nonzero complex numbers and have different arguments, the coefficients in the brackets vanish, so and . Therefore,
Now, if and are two distinct interesting pairs, one may apply (4) to both pairs. Subtracting, we get
Taking absolute values provides the required result.
Solution 2
Solution 2. Let be an interesting pair. This time we prove that
As in Solution 1, we introduce the circle passing through the points , and , together with the points and at which the line intersect the line and the circle for the second time, respectively. Let moreover be the centre of (see Figures 8 and 9). As in Solution 1, we note that is the midpoint of and show that , which implies .
Figure 8
Figure 9
Suppose now that (see Figure 8). Then , and consequently the lines and are perpendicular. It implies that the lines and meet at a point lying on the circle . Since the lines and are both perpendicular to the line , they are parallel to each other, and hence . On the other hand, , so we infer that triangles and are similar. This yields
If, on the other hand, , then the points , and lie on a common line, and this line is the perpendicular bisector of (see Figure 9). This implies that is a diameter of , which yields . So also in this case we obtain
Thus (5) is proved.
Let and be the feet of the perpendiculars from and onto and , respectively (see Figure 10). We claim that the point lies on the line . Consider now the composition of the dilatation with factor and centre , and the reflection with respect to the angle bisector of . This transformation is a similarity that takes , and to , and , respectively. Since lies on the line , the point lies on the line .
Figure 10