Given is a triangle with the property that . Let be the point on line segment such that . Let and be points on the interior of line segments and respectively, such that first, and second, is tangent to the incircle of . Let be the intersection of and . Determine the ratio .
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Solution
The quadrilateral touches all its sides to the inscribed circle of . At each vertex, there are two equal tangent segments. Two opposite sides of the quadrilateral consist precisely of the four different tangent segments, so .
Given , we have . Let be the scaling factor of this similarity, so , and . Then . Similarly, . Now we have
,
where the last equality holds due to the given condition in the problem. Dividing by gives , or thus . We conclude that is the midpoint of and is the midpoint of .
We already knew , which implies . Given , we also have , so . Combining these ratios, we get
We know that , since is the midpoint of . This also means that is the midpoint of , as . Thus . We conclude that .
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