Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.6 AIME, harder Prove it Argentina

Let II be the incenter of triangle ABCABC. The incircle of ABCABC is tangent to side BCBC at DD. Let PP and QQ be points on rays IBIB and ICIC respectively such that IAP=CAD\angle IAP = \angle CAD and IAQ=BAD\angle IAQ = \angle BAD. Prove that AP=AQAP = AQ.

Solution

Let's assume the incircle is tangent to ABAB at FF, then we have that FAD=IAQ\angle FAD = \angle IAQ and AFD=180B2=AIQ\angle AFD = \frac{180^\circ - \angle B}{2} = \angle AIQ where the first equality is from the statement and the other are well-known identities. It follows that AFD\triangle AFD and AIQ\triangle AIQ are similar to each other and hence ADQ\triangle ADQ and AFI\triangle AFI are also similar to each other. In particular ADQ=AFI=90\angle ADQ = \angle AFI = 90^\circ and moreover, by a similar argument, we get the analogous equality ADP=90\angle ADP = 90^\circ. Finally, we observe that PAD=CAI=BAI=QAD\angle PAD = \angle CAI = \angle BAI = \angle QAD and hence ADAD is the angle bisector and also the altitude that corresponds to vertex AA in triangle PAQ\triangle PAQ. Thus AP=AQAP = AQ.

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