Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 6.2 National olympiad Prove it

Let OO be the circumcenter of an acute scalene triangle ABCA B C. Line OAO A intersects the altitudes of ABCA B C through BB and CC at PP and QQ, respectively. The altitudes meet at HH. Prove that the circumcenter of triangle PQHP Q H lies on a median of triangle ABCA B C. (Ukraine)

Solution

Suppose, without loss of generality, that AB<ACAB < AC. We have PQH=90QAB=90OAB=12AOB=ACB\angle PQH = 90^\circ - \angle QAB = 90^\circ - \angle OAB = \frac{1}{2} \angle AOB = \angle ACB, and similarly QPH=ABC\angle QPH = \angle ABC. Thus triangles ABCABC and HPQHPQ are similar. Let Ω\Omega and ω\omega be the circumcircles of ABCABC and HPQHPQ, respectively. Since AHP=90HAC=ACB=HQP\angle AHP = 90^\circ - \angle HAC = \angle ACB = \angle HQP, line AHAH is tangent to ω\omega. ! Let TT be the center of ω\omega and let lines ATAT and BCBC meet at MM. We will take advantage of the similarity between ABCABC and HPQHPQ and the fact that AHAH is tangent to ω\omega at HH, with AA on line PQPQ. Consider the corresponding tangent ASAS to Ω\Omega, with SBCS \in BC. Then SS and AA correspond to each other in ABCHPQ\triangle ABC \sim \triangle HPQ, and therefore OSM=OAT=OAM\angle OSM = \angle OAT = \angle OAM. Hence quadrilateral SAOMSAOM is cyclic, and since the tangent line ASAS is perpendicular to AOAO, OMS=180OAS=90\angle OMS = 180^\circ - \angle OAS = 90^\circ. This means that MM is the orthogonal projection of OO onto BCBC, which is its midpoint. So TT lies on median AMAM of triangle ABCABC.

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.