Let be a triangle with circumcircle and incentre . A line intersects the lines , and at points , and , respectively, distinct from the points , and . The perpendicular bisectors , and of the segments , and , respectively determine a triangle . Show that the circumcircle of the triangle is tangent to . (Denmark) Preamble. Let and let denote the circumcircle of the triangle . Denote by , and the second intersection points of and , respectively, with . It is known that is the perpendicular bisector of is the perpendicular bisector of , and is the perpendicular bisector of . In particular, the triangles and are homothetic, because their corresponding sides are parallel. The solutions below mostly exploit the following approach. Consider the triangles and , or some other pair of homothetic triangles and inscribed into and , respectively. In order to prove that and are tangent, it suffices to show that the centre of the homothety taking to lies on (or ), or, in other words, to show that and are perspective (i.e., the lines joining corresponding vertices are concurrent), with their perspector lying on (or ). We use directed angles throughout all the solutions.
Solution
Claim 1. The reflections and of the line in the lines , and , respectively, are concurrent at a point which belongs to . ! Proof. Notice that . But and implies , so, since , we obtain Since is the reflection of in , belongs to ; similarly, belongs to . Then (1) shows that the common point of and lies on ; similarly, the common point of and lies on . If and , then and are the second point of intersection of and , hence they coincide. Otherwise, if, say, , then , so , which shows that is tangent at to and . So and coincide in all the cases, and the conclusion of the claim follows. Now we prove that are collinear. Denote by and the reflections of the point in the lines and , respectively. Then lies on lies on , and hence the quadrilateral is cyclic. Notice also that since , the points lie on a circle with centre . Using in this circle the diameter yields . Therefore, so the points are collinear. By a similar argument, and are collinear. As mentioned in the preamble, the statement of the problem follows. Comment 1. After proving Claim 1 one may proceed in another way. As it was shown, the reflections of in the sidelines of are concurrent at . Thus is the Steiner line of with respect to (that is the line containing the reflections of in the sidelines of ). The properties of the Steiner line imply that lies on , and passes through the orthocentre of the triangle . ! Let , and be the reflections of the point in the lines , and , respectively. Then the triangle is inscribed in and homothetic to (by an easy angle chasing). Since , and , the triangles and form a required pair of triangles and mentioned in the preamble. Comment 2. The following observation shows how one may guess the description of the tangency point from Solution 1. Let us fix a direction and move the line parallel to this direction with constant speed. Then the points , and are moving with constant speeds along the lines , and , respectively. In this case , and are moving with constant speeds, defining a family of homothetic triangles with a common centre of homothety . Notice that the triangle belongs to this family (for passing through ). We may specify the location of considering the degenerate case when , and are concurrent. In this degenerate case all the lines have a common point. Note that the lines remain constant as is moving (keeping its direction). Thus should be the common point of , and , lying on .