Olympiad Maths Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 6.0 National olympiad Prove it Ukraine

In an acute triangle ABCABC points HH and OO are the orthocenter and the circumcenter correspondingly. The line HOHO intersects the sides ABAB and ACAC in points XX and YY correspondingly, so that the point HH lies on the segment OXOX. It turned out that XH=HO=OYXH = HO = OY. Find the angle BAC\angle BAC.

(Oleksii Masalitin)

Solution

In the solution of this problem, we will be using the following well-known fact: in any triangle, the distance from the vertex to the orthocenter is twice larger than the distance from the circumcenter to the opposite side.

Denote by OBO_B and HBH_B the projections of OO and HH correspondingly onto the line ACAC, define points OCO_C and HCH_C similarly (fig. 9). From the fact above it follows that BH=2OOBBH = 2OO_B and CH=2OOCCH = 2OO_C. Also note, that OOBHHBOO_B \parallel HH_B and HO=OYHO = OY, and therefore OOBOO_B is the midline of YHHB\triangle YHH_B, so HHB=2OOB=BHHH_B = 2OO_B = BH. Similarly HHCHH_C is the midline of XOOC\triangle XOO_C, so HHC=12OOC=14CHHH_C = \frac{1}{2}OO_C = \frac{1}{4}CH. As the quadrilateral BHCHCBBHC_HC_B is cyclic, BHHHB=CHHHCBH \cdot HH_B = CH \cdot HH_C, and BH2=4HHC2BH^2 = 4HH_C^2, so BH=2HHCBH = 2HH_C, and HBHC=30\angle HBH_C = 30^\circ. Now it's clear that BAC=60\angle BAC = 60^\circ.

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