Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 6.1 National Olympiad Prove it Serbia

Problem:

Let HH be the orthocenter, and OO the circumcenter of an acute triangle ABCABC. Points DD and EE are the feet of the altitudes from AA and BB, respectively. Let KK denote the intersection point of the lines ODOD and BEBE, and let LL denote the intersection point of the lines OEOE and ADAD. Let XX be the second intersection point of the circumcircles of triangles HKDHKD and HLEHLE, and let MM be the midpoint of side ABAB. Prove that points K,LK, L and MM are collinear if and only if XX is the center of the circumcircle of triangle EODEOD.

Solution

Solution:

If XX is the center of the circumcircle of ODE\triangle ODE, then 90KDE=90ODE=XEO=XEL=XHD=XKD90^\circ - \angle KDE = 90^\circ - \angle ODE = \angle XEO = \angle XEL = \angle XHD = \angle XKD (all angles are oriented), from which it follows that XKDEXK \perp DE; analogously XLDEXL \perp DE, i.e. KK and LL lie on the perpendicular bisector of segment DEDE, so DEHODEHO is an isosceles trapezoid, hence D,E,O,HD, E, O, H lie on a circle.

On the other hand, if OO lies on the circle HDEHDE, that is, on the circle with diameter CHCH, the inscribed angles over EHEH and ODOD are equal (ECH=OCD\angle ECH = \angle OCD), so DEHODEHO is an isosceles trapezoid, and from this DL=ELDL = EL. We now have EXH=ELH=2EDH\angle EXH = \angle ELH = 2 \angle EDH

Figure 1

and analogously DXH=2DEH\angle DXH = 2 \angle DEH, from which it follows that XX is the center of the circle DEOHDEOH. Therefore, XX is the center of the circle ODEODE if and only if D,E,OD, E, O and HH lie on a circle.

If the points D,E,O,HD, E, O, H lie on a circle, then K,LK, L and MM lie on the perpendicular bisector of segment DEDE, which proves one direction of the problem. Now suppose that OO lies outside the circle CDHECDHE (the case when OO is inside the circle is treated in the same way). Since CODECO \perp DE, we have DL>LEDL > LE and EK>KDEK > KD, i.e. KK and LL lie on different sides of the perpendicular bisector of segment DEDE, while MM belongs to this perpendicular bisector. Therefore, if K,LK, L and MM are collinear, MM must lie between KK and LL. It follows that one of the points KK and LL is outside triangle ABCABC, and the other is inside the triangle. However, when OO is outside the quadrilateral ABDEABDE, both points KK and LL are outside the triangle, and otherwise both are inside the triangle. This is a contradiction with the assumption that MM lies on the line KLKL, which proves the other direction.

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