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Geometry Difficulty 7.0 National Olympiad, round 2 Prove it Italy

Problem:

Given an isosceles triangle ABCABC with AB=ACAB = AC and BAC^<60\widehat{BAC} < 60^\circ, let DD be the point on ACAC such that DBC^=BAC^\widehat{DBC} = \widehat{BAC}, let EE be the intersection of the perpendicular bisector of BDBD with the line through AA parallel to BCBC, and let FF be the point on line ACAC, on the side of AA with respect to CC, such that the length of FAFA is twice the length of ACAC.
Finally, let rr be the perpendicular to ABAB drawn from FF, ss the perpendicular to ACAC drawn from EE, and tt the line BDBD. Prove that:
(a) the lines EBEB and ACAC are parallel;
(b) the lines rr, ss and tt are concurrent.

Solution

Solution:

For convenience of notation, let BAC=α\overline{BAC} = \alpha and ABC^=ACB^=β\widehat{ABC} = \widehat{ACB} = \beta.

Let us draw the circle circumscribed about triangle BDABDA and let EE' be its intersection with the parallel to BCBC through AA; we will show that EE' lies on the perpendicular bisector of BDBD, and must therefore coincide with EE. We have BAD^=BED^=α\widehat{BAD} = \widehat{BE'D} = \alpha (both subtend BDBD), EDB^=EAB^=ABC^=β\widehat{E'DB} = \widehat{E'AB} = \widehat{ABC} = \beta (the last equality follows from the parallelism of lines EAE'A and BCBC); hence triangle BEDBE'D is similar to triangle BACBAC, and is therefore isosceles. It follows that EE' lies on the perpendicular bisector of the base BDBD,

Figure 1

as required. Moreover we have thus obtained that BEA^\widehat{BEA} must be supplementary to ADB^\widehat{ADB}, that is, equal to β\beta. This proves the parallelism between line EBEB and line ACAC.

Now let PP be the point of intersection between lines rr and ss, and QQ the point of intersection between lines rr and tt; call HH the projection of FF onto line ABAB. By construction, line rr is perpendicular to line ABAB, while line ss is perpendicular to ACAC, hence to its parallel BEBE; in other words, angles BEP^\widehat{BEP} and BHP^\widehat{BHP} are right angles, so quadrilateral BEHPBEHP is cyclic. It would suffice to show that QQ lies on the circle circumscribed about BEHPBEHP to conclude that PP and QQ coincide (since both are points on line rr different from HH), from which the concurrency of lines rr, ss and tt follows.

The angle BQH^\widehat{BQH}, since BHQ^\widehat{BHQ} is a right angle, equals 90(ABC^CBD^)=90+αβ90^\circ - (\widehat{ABC} - \widehat{CBD}) = 90^\circ + \alpha - \beta. Note that quadrilateral AEFHAEFH is cyclic: AHF^\widehat{AHF} is a right angle by construction; EAEA is congruent to BCBC, AFAF is twice ACAC, EAF^=β\widehat{EAF} = \beta, and hence triangle EAFEAF is similar to the triangle formed by AA, BB and the foot of the altitude of ABCABC from AA, so the angle FEA^\widehat{FEA} is also a right angle. Observing that both FEH^\widehat{FEH} and FAH^\widehat{FAH} subtend the arc FHFH, we have shown FEH^=FAH^=α\widehat{FEH} = \widehat{FAH} = \alpha. We consequently obtain BEH^=BEA^+AEF^FEH^=β+90α\widehat{BEH} = \widehat{BEA} + \widehat{AEF} - \widehat{FEH} = \beta + 90^\circ - \alpha; that is, angles BQH^\widehat{BQH} and BEH^\widehat{BEH} are supplementary, so quadrilateral BQHEBQHE is cyclic. We have thus shown that QQ belongs to the circle circumscribed about BEHPBEHP, whence the claim.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from it; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.