Maths Olympiad Prep

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, 2011

Geometry Difficulty 4.5 AIME Prove it South Africa

Given a scalene triangle ABCABC with AB+CA=2BC|AB| + |CA| = 2|BC|, show that the line joining the incenter and the centroid of the triangle is parallel to BCBC.

Solution

Adopting the usual notation, 2a=b+c2a = b + c, hence s=a+b+c=32as = a + b + c = \frac{3}{2}a. The area of the triangle is K=sr=32ar=12ahaK = sr = \frac{3}{2}ar = \frac{1}{2}a h_a, where hah_a is the altitude from AA onto BCBC. Therefore ha=3rh_a = 3r, and so the incenter is a third of the way to the vertex. The centroid is also a third of the way to the vertex; therefore the line joining the incenter and centroid is parallel to BCBC.

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