Let be the circumcenter of an acute scalene triangle . Line intersects the altitudes of through and at and , respectively. The altitudes meet at . Prove that the circumcenter of triangle lies on a median of triangle . (Ukraine)
Solution
Suppose, without loss of generality, that . We have , and similarly . Thus triangles and are similar. Let and be the circumcircles of and , respectively. Since , line is tangent to . ! Let be the center of and let lines and meet at . We will take advantage of the similarity between and and the fact that is tangent to at , with on line . Consider the corresponding tangent to , with . Then and correspond to each other in , and therefore . Hence quadrilateral is cyclic, and since the tangent line is perpendicular to , . This means that is the orthogonal projection of onto , which is its midpoint. So lies on median of triangle .
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