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Geometry Difficulty 5.7 AIME, harder Prove it

10.7 Let the excircle of triangle ABCABC opposite to vertex AA touch side BCBC at point AA'. Draw a line aa through point AA' parallel to the angle bisector of A\angle A, and similarly draw lines bb and cc. Prove: The lines aa, bb, and cc intersect at the same point.

Solution

10.7 As shown in Figure 4, let the incircle of ABC\triangle ABC touch its sides at points A1,B1,C1A_{1}, B_{1}, C_{1}. Draw a line a1a_{1} through A1A_{1} parallel to the angle bisector of A\angle A. Since AB1C1\triangle AB_{1}C_{1} is an isosceles triangle, the angle bisector of A\angle A is perpendicular to B1C1B_{1}C_{1}, thus a1B1C1a_{1} \perp B_{1}C_{1}, meaning a1a_{1} passes through the altitude of A1B1C1\triangle A_{1}B_{1}C_{1} on side B1C1B_{1}C_{1}.

As shown in Figure 5, let the midpoints of the sides of ABC\triangle ABC be A0,B0,C0A_{0}, B_{0}, C_{0}. Since A0B0C0\triangle A_{0}B_{0}C_{0} is similar to ABC\triangle ABC with a similarity ratio of 12\frac{1}{2}, the angle bisector of A\angle A is parallel to the angle bisector of A0\angle A_{0}. Let the incenter of A0B0C0\triangle A_{0}B_{0}C_{0} be SS.

It is well known that point AA^{\prime} is equidistant from point A1A_{1} and the midpoint of side BCBC (the same property holds for point BB^{\prime} with point B1B_{1}, and point CC^{\prime} with point C1C_{1}).

Perform a symmetry transformation about point SS. In this transformation, line a1a_{1} becomes line aa. Thus, under this transformation, the altitudes of A1B1C1\triangle A_{1}B_{1}C_{1} are transformed to lines a,b,ca, b, c, respectively, so these three lines intersect at a single point, which is the reflection of the orthocenter of A1B1C1\triangle A_{1}B_{1}C_{1} about SS.

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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.