The midpoint of segment is . On one side of line , we draw a semicircle over and , and we draw arcs with radius around and , the intersection point of the latter being . Construct a tangent circle inscribed in the cyclic quadrilateral .
Solution
I. solution. The center of the sought circle lies on the segment , because externally touches the equal-radius semicircles and , and internally touches the equal-radius arcs and . Therefore, is equidistant from the midpoints and of the diameters and , respectively, and from points and . The perpendicular bisectors of segments and coincide: the line . This is also the axis of symmetry of the arc quadrilateral, so to more precisely determine , it is sufficient to ensure that touches one of the semicircles and one of the arcs or , from which it follows that it touches all four arcs.
!
Let touch at and at , denote its radius by , and take the segment as the unit length (Figure 1). Then , . Expressing in two ways from the right triangles and , we get a one-variable equation for :
from which .
This segment can be constructed in several ways using proportional division. It is convenient to use the fact that segment is divided into 4 equal parts. Let the reflection of and over be and , respectively, so and ; measure the segments and from a point on an arbitrary ray, let the endpoints be and , respectively, and finally cut the line with the line parallel to through at point . Then . Furthermore, , so can be found by intersecting the circle with radius centered at with .
indeed touches because , the radius of , and also because
and this is equal to the sum of the radii of and . - Only one suitable circle can be constructed.
György Pásztor (Szeged, Petőfi-telepi I. sz. ált. isk. VII. o. t.)
II. solution. Thinking of the method of circle inversion, consider the circle concentric with that passes through and (Figure 2). Its radius is , so it touches the circle with radius centered at . Therefore, can also be found as the center of the circle passing through and and touching . Let the point of tangency be , and the intersection of the common tangent of and with be .
!
can be determined as follows. Consider a helper circle that passes through and and intersects at one of its common points, . Let the second intersection of line with be , and with be . We will show that and coincide, and thus are the same as the second common point of and , . Apply the known theorem for a secant and a tangent from a point outside a circle first to and
then to and
and finally to the two secants of from , with the tangent from inserted
From these, , so , and this proves our statement.
Therefore, is the intersection of the line connecting the intersection points of and with , and can be found by intersecting the Thales circle with diameter above with . can then be