Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /1288 of 1394

Geometry Difficulty 6.0 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:

Let ABCABC be a triangle such that AB=13AB = 13, BC=14BC = 14, CA=15CA = 15 and let E,FE, F be the feet of the altitudes from BB and CC, respectively. Let the circumcircle of triangle AEFAEF be ω\omega. We draw three lines, tangent to the circumcircle of triangle AEFAEF at AA, EE, and FF. Compute the area of the triangle these three lines determine.

Solution

Solution:

Note that AEFABCAEF \sim ABC. Let the vertices of the triangle whose area we wish to compute be P,Q,RP, Q, R, opposite A,E,FA, E, F respectively. Since H,OH, O are isogonal conjugates, line AHAH passes through the circumcenter of AEFAEF, so QRBCQR \parallel BC.

Let MM be the midpoint of BCBC. We claim that M=PM = P. This can be seen by angle chasing at E,FE, F to find that PFB=ABC\angle PFB = \angle ABC, PEC=ACB\angle PEC = \angle ACB, and noting that MM is the circumcenter of BFECBFEC. So, the height from PP to QRQR is the height from AA to BCBC, and thus if KK is the area of ABCABC, the area we want is QRBCK\frac{QR}{BC} K.

Heron's formula gives K=84K = 84, and similar triangles QAF,MBFQAF, MBF and RAE,MCERAE, MCE give QA=BC2tanBtanAQA = \frac{BC}{2} \frac{\tan B}{\tan A}, RA=BC2tanCtanARA = \frac{BC}{2} \frac{\tan C}{\tan A}, so that QRBC=tanB+tanC2tanA=tanBtanC12=1110\frac{QR}{BC} = \frac{\tan B + \tan C}{2 \tan A} = \frac{\tan B \tan C - 1}{2} = \frac{11}{10},
since the height from AA to BCBC is 1212. So our answer is 4625\frac{462}{5}.

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.