Let and be two convex quadrilateral regions in the plane (regions contain their boundary). Let them intersect, with a point in the intersection. Suppose that for every line through the segment is strictly longer than the segment . Is it possible that the ratio of the area of to the area of is greater than 1.9?
(Bulgaria) Nikolai Beluhov
Solution
The answer is in the affirmative: Given a positive yields . Integration then gives us , as needed.
This can also be proved via elementary methods. Actually, we will establish the following more general fact.
Fact. Let and be two convex quadrangles in the plane, and let be one of their common points different from the vertices of . Denote by the line , and assume that for every the length of segment is greater than the length of segment . Then $\left[P^{\prime}\right]\left[P^{\prime}\right]\left(1-\frac{B_{1} C_{3}+B_{4} C_{2}}{2 B_{1} B_{4}}\right) \geq \frac{\left[P^{\prime}\right]}{2} .
\end{aligned}
A contradiction.
Case 2. Assume now that the rays $B_{1} B_{2}$ and $B_{4} B_{3}$ intersect at some point (see the right figure above). Denote by $L$ the common point of $B_{2} C_{1}$ and $B_{3} C_{4}$. We have $\left[B_{2} C_{4} C_{1}\right] \geq\left[B_{2} C_{4} B_{3}\right]$, hence $\left[C_{1} C_{4} L\right] \geq\left[B_{2} B_{3} L\right]$. Thus we have
A final contradiction.