Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Prove it

Example 4. Let the opposite edges of tetrahedron ABCDABCD be pairwise perpendicular. Try to prove: the midpoints of the six edges of tetrahedron ABCDABCD lie on the same sphere.

Solution

Proof: As shown in the figure, let the midpoints of AB,BC,CD,DA,ACAB, BC, CD, DA, AC, and BDBD be E,F,G,H,K,LE, F, G, H, K, L respectively, and ACBD,ABCD,ADBCAC \perp BD, AB \perp CD, AD \perp BC.

Since EFAC,GHACEF \parallel AC, GH \parallel AC, we have EFGHEF \parallel GH.
Similarly,
EHF~GEH \parallel \tilde{F} G.
Therefore, EFGHEFGH is a parallelogram.
 Since ACBD,EFEH. \begin{array}{l} \text { Since } \because AC \perp BD, \\ \therefore EF \perp EH . \end{array}

Thus, EFGHEFGH is a rectangle. The intersection point OO of its diagonals EGEG and FHFH satisfies
OE=OF=OG=OH. O E=O F=O G=O H .

Similarly, ELGKELGK is also a rectangle, and the intersection point of its diagonals EGEG and KLKL is the midpoint OO of EGEG, hence
OE=OK=OG=OL O E=O K=O G=O L \text {. }

Therefore,
OE=OF=OG=OH=OK=OL O E=O F=O G=O H =O K=O L \text {. }

This also indicates that E,F,G,H,K,LE, F, G, H, K, L lie on a sphere with OO as the center and OEOE as the radius.

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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.