Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /67 of 462

Geometry Difficulty 4.9 AIME Prove it Ireland

The orthocentre HH of triangle ABCABC is reflected in each of the three sides of the triangle, giving points DD, EE and FF.
Prove that HH is the incentre of triangle DEFDEF.

Solution

Construct the circumcircle of ABC\triangle ABC. Let DD', EE' and FF' denote the points where the altitudes meet the circumcircle. Let KK be the intersection of ADAD' with BCBC and denote the orthocentre of ABC\triangle ABC by HH. Then BAD=90ABC=BCF\angle BAD' = 90^\circ - \angle ABC = \angle BCF and BAD=BCD\angle BAD' = \angle BCD', hence the triangles HKCHKC and KDCKD'C are congruent. This shows that HK=KD|HK| = |KD'| and D=DD' = D is the image of HH when reflected in BCBC. Similarly, E=EE' = E and F=FF' = F.
Figure 1
Now DFC=DAC=90ACB\angle DFC = \angle DAC = 90^\circ - \angle ACB and CFE=CBE=90ACB\angle CFE = \angle CBE = 90^\circ - \angle ACB. Therefore, DFC=CFE\angle DFC = \angle CFE which means that CFCF is the bisector of DFE\angle DFE. Similarly, BEBE and ADAD are the bisectors of FED\angle FED and FDE\angle FDE, respectively. This shows that HH is the incentre of DEF\triangle DEF.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

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