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Geometry Difficulty 7.6 National Olympiad, round 2 Prove it Romania

Given a triangle A0A1A2A_0A_1A_2, determine the locus of the centers of the equilateral triangles X0X1X2X_0X_1X_2 satisfying the condition that each of the lines XkXk+1X_kX_{k+1} passes through AkA_k (all indices are reduced modulo 3).

Solution

From any point X0X_0 on γ0\gamma_0 draw lines X0A2X1X_0A_2X_1 and X0A1X2X_0A_1X_2, where X1X_1 lies on γ1\gamma_1 and X2X_2 lies on γ2\gamma_2. The points X1,A0,X2X_1, A_0, X_2 are collinear, and the triangle X0X1X2X_0X_1X_2 is an equilateral triangle satisfying the conditions in the statement.

Figure 1

Let MkM_k be the midpoint of the minor arc Ak+1Ak+2A_{k+1}A_{k+2} of the circle γk\gamma_k, and notice that the triangle M0M1M2M_0M_1M_2 is equilateral, since the MkM_k are the centers of the inner Napoleon triangles associated with the triangle A0A1A2A_0A_1A_2. The center XX of the triangle X0X1X2X_0X_1X_2 is the intersection of X0M0X_0M_0 and X1M1X_1M_1, which must intersect at 6060^\circ. Since the locus of XX includes the three points MkM_k, it turns out that the locus of XX is the circle M0M1M2M_0M_1M_2.
Similarly, another circle is obtained by starting with the inner Napoleon triangles. The required locus is a pair of circles.

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