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Geometry Difficulty 6.9 National olympiad Find the answer

On the circle kk, the points A,BA,B are given, while ABAB is not the diameter of the circle kk. Point CC moves along the long arc ABAB of circle kk so that the triangle ABCABC is acute. Let D,ED,E be the feet of the altitudes from A,BA, B respectively. Let FF be the projection of point DD on line ACAC and GG be the projection of point EE on line BCBC.
(a) Prove that the lines ABAB and FGFG are parallel.
(b) Determine the set of midpoints SS of segment FGFG while along all allowable positions of point CC.

Solution

### Part (a): Prove that the lines AB AB and FG FG are parallel.

1. Identify the Altitudes and Projections:
- Let D D and E E be the feet of the altitudes from A A and B B respectively.
- Let F F be the projection of D D on line AC AC .
- Let G G be the projection of E E on line BC BC .

2. Use Similar Triangles:
- In CED \triangle CED , FG FG is the line segment joining the projections of D D and E E on AC AC and BC BC respectively.
- Since D D and E E are the feet of the altitudes, D D lies on BC BC and E E lies on AC AC .

3. Parallelism Argument:
- Since D D and E E are the feet of the altitudes, DE DE is perpendicular to AB AB .
- The line segment FG FG is the image of DE DE under the homothety centered at C C that maps CED \triangle CED to CAB \triangle CAB .
- Therefore, FG FG is parallel to AB AB .

Thus, we have shown that ABFG AB \parallel FG .

### Part (b): Determine the set of midpoints S S of segment FG FG while along all allowable positions of point C C .

1. **Fixed Length of ED ED :**
- By Ptolemy's theorem in cyclic quadrilateral AEDB AEDB , we have:
EDAB+AEBD=ADEB ED \cdot AB + AE \cdot BD = AD \cdot EB
- Since A A and B B are fixed points on the circle, the length ED ED is fixed.

2. **Midpoint of ED ED :**
- Let M M be the midpoint of AB AB and I I be the midpoint of ED ED .
- Since AB AB is fixed, M M is a fixed point.
- The length IM IM is given by:
IM=EM2(12ED)2=12csinC IM = \sqrt{EM^2 - \left(\frac{1}{2} ED\right)^2} = \frac{1}{2} c \cdot \sin C

3. **Locus of Midpoint S S :**
- From Lemma 1 and Lemma 2, the length SI SI is fixed and given by:
SI=12ccosCsinC=14csin2C SI = \frac{1}{2} c \cdot \cos C \sin C = \frac{1}{4} c \cdot \sin 2C
- Since SIAB SI \perp AB , the locus of S S is a circle centered at O O on the perpendicular bisector of AB AB with radius:
12csinC \frac{1}{2} c \cdot \sin C

Combining the above lemmas, we conclude that the point S S moves on a circle whose center O O lies on the perpendicular bisector of AB AB and the radius of the circle is 12csinC \frac{1}{2} c \cdot \sin C .

\blacksquare

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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.