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Geometry Difficulty 7.0 National Olympiad Prove it JBMO

Problem:
Let EE and FF be two distinct points inside of a parallelogram ABCDA B C D. Find the maximum number of triangles with the same area and having the vertices in three of the following five points: A,B,C,D,E,FA, B, C, D, E, F.

Solution

Solution:
We shall use the following two well known results:

Lemma 1. Let A,B,C,DA, B, C, D be four points lying in the same plane such that the line ABA B does not intersect the segment CDC D (in particular ABCDA B C D is a convex quadrilateral). If [ABC]=[ABD][A B C]=[A B D], then ABCDA B \parallel C D.

Lemma 2. Let XX be a point inside of a parallelogram ABCDA B C D. Then [ACX]<[ABC][A C X]<[A B C] and [BDX]<[BDC][B D X]<[B D C]. (Here and below the notation [S][S] stands for the area of the surface of SS.)

With the points A,B,C,D,E,FA, B, C, D, E, F we can form 20 triangles. We will show that at most ten of them can have the same area. In that sense three cases may occur.

Case 1. EFE F is parallel with one side of the parallelogram ABCDA B C D.

We can assume that EFADE F \parallel A D, EE lies inside of the triangle ABFA B F and FF lies inside of the triangle CDEC D E. With the points A,B,C,D,E,FA, B, C, D, E, F we can form ten pairs of triangles as follows:

(ADE,AEF);(ADF,DEF);(BCE,BEF);(BCF,CEF);(CDE,CDF);(\triangle A D E, \triangle A E F); (\triangle A D F, \triangle D E F); (\triangle B C E, \triangle B E F); (\triangle B C F, \triangle C E F); (\triangle C D E, \triangle C D F);

(ABE,ABF);(ADC,ACE);(ABC,ACF);(ABD,BDE);(CBD,BDF)(\triangle A B E, \triangle A B F); (\triangle A D C, \triangle A C E); (\triangle A B C, \triangle A C F); (\triangle A B D, \triangle B D E); (\triangle C B D, \triangle B D F).

Using Lemmas 1-2 one can easily prove that any two triangles that belong to the same pair have distinct area, so there exists at most ten triangles having the same area.

Case 2. EFE F is parallel with a diagonal of the parallelogram ABCDA B C D.

Let us assume EFACE F \parallel A C and that E,FE, F lie inside of the triangle ABCA B C. We consider the following pairs of triangles:

(ABD,BDE);(ABC,BCF);(ACD,BCE);(ABF,ABE);(BEF,DEF);(\triangle A B D, \triangle B D E); (\triangle A B C, \triangle B C F); (\triangle A C D, \triangle B C E); (\triangle A B F, \triangle A B E); (\triangle B E F, \triangle D E F);

(AEF,ACE);(CEF,ACF);(ADE,ADF);(DCE,DCF);(CBD,BDF)(\triangle A E F, \triangle A C E); (\triangle C E F, \triangle A C F); (\triangle A D E, \triangle A D F); (\triangle D C E, \triangle D C F); (\triangle C B D, \triangle B D F).

With the same idea as above we deduce that any two triangles that belong to the same pair have distinct area and the conclusion follows.

We also note that if EE and FF lie on ACA C then only 16 of 20 triangles are nondegenerate. In this case we consider the following pairs:

((ABE,ABF);(ABC,BCF);(BCE,BEF);(ADE,ADF);(ACD,DCF);(CDE,EDF);(BDE,ABD);(BDF,BDC))( \begin{aligned} & (\triangle A B E, \triangle A B F); (\triangle A B C, \triangle B C F); (\triangle B C E, \triangle B E F); (\triangle A D E, \triangle A D F); \\ & (\triangle A C D, \triangle D C F); (\triangle C D E, \triangle E D F); (\triangle B D E, \triangle A B D); (\triangle B D F, \triangle B D C) \end{aligned} )

Case 3. EFE F is not parallel with any side or diagonal of ABCDA B C D.

We claim that at most two of the triangles AEF,BEF,CEF,DEFA E F, B E F, C E F, D E F can have the same area. Indeed, supposing the contrary, we may have [AEF]=[BEF]=[CEF][A E F]=[B E F]=[C E F]. We remark first that A,B,CA, B, C do not belong to EFE F (otherwise, exactly one of the above triangles is degenerate, contradiction!). Hence at least two of the points A,B,CA, B, C belong to the same side of the line EFE F. Using now Lemma 1 we get that EFE F is parallel with ABA B or BCB C or ACA C. This is clearly a contradiction and our claim follows. With the remaining 16 triangles we form 8 pairs as follows:

(ABD,BDE);(CDB,BDF);(ADC,ACE);(ABC,ACF);(\triangle A B D, \triangle B D E); (\triangle C D B, \triangle B D F); (\triangle A D C, \triangle A C E); (\triangle A B C, \triangle A C F);

(ABE,ABF);(BCE,BCF);(ADE,ADF);(DCE,DCF)(\triangle A B E, \triangle A B F); (\triangle B C E, \triangle B C F); (\triangle A D E, \triangle A D F); (\triangle D C E, \triangle D C F).

With the same arguments as above, we get at most ten triangles with the same area.

To conclude the proof, it remains only to give an example of points E,FE, F inside of the parallelogram ABCDA B C D such that exactly ten of the triangles that can be formed with the vertices A,B,C,D,E,FA, B, C, D, E, F have the same area.

Denote ACBD={O}A C \cap B D=\{O\} and let M,NM, N be the midpoints of ABA B and CDC D respectively. Consider EE and FF the midpoints of MOM O and NON O. Then O,M,N,E,FO, M, N, E, F are collinear and ME=EO=FO=NFM E=E O=F O=N F. Since EE and FF are the centroids of the triangles ABFA B F and CDEC D E we get [ABE]=[AEF]=[BEF][A B E]=[A E F]=[B E F] and [CEF]=[DEF]=[CDF][C E F]=[D E F]=[C D F]. On the other hand, taking into account that AECFA E C F and BEDFB E D F are parallelograms we deduce [AEF]=[CEF]=[ACF][A E F]=[C E F]=[A C F] and [BEF]=[DEF]=[BDE]=[BDF][B E F]=[D E F]=[B D E]=[B D F]. From the above equalities we conclude that the triangles

ABE,CDF,ACE,ACF,BDE,BDF,AEF,BEF,CEF,DEF\triangle A B E, \triangle C D F, \triangle A C E, \triangle A C F, \triangle B D E, \triangle B D F, \triangle A E F, \triangle B E F, \triangle C E F, \triangle D E F

have the same area. This finishes our proof.

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