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Geometry Difficulty 6.2 National olympiad Prove it

5.109*. a) Prove that the projections of point PP on the Simson lines of triangles BCDBCD, CDACDA, DABDAB, and BACBAC lie on one line (the Simson line of the inscribed quadrilateral).

b) Prove that analogously, by induction, the Simson line of an inscribed nn-gon can be defined as the line containing the projections of point PP onto the Simson lines of all (n1)(n-1)-gons obtained by removing one of the vertices of the nn-gon.

Solution

5.109. a) Let B1,C1B_{1}, C_{1}, and D1D_{1} be the projections of point PP onto the lines AB,ACA B, A C, and ADA D. The points B1,C1B_{1}, C_{1}, and D1D_{1} lie on a circle with diameter APA P. The lines B1C1,C1D1B_{1} C_{1}, C_{1} D_{1}, and D1B1D_{1} B_{1} are the Simson lines of point PP with respect to the triangles ABC,ACDA B C, A C D, and ADBA D B, respectively. Therefore, the projections of point PP onto the Simson lines of these triangles lie on a single line - the Simson line of the triangle B1C1D1B_{1} C_{1} D_{1}. Similarly, it can be shown that any triple of the considered points lies on a single line.

b) Let PP be a point on the circumcircle of the nn-gon A1AnA_{1} \ldots A_{n}; B2,B3,,BnB_{2}, B_{3}, \ldots, B_{n} be the projections of point PP onto the lines A1A2,,A1AnA_{1} A_{2}, \ldots, A_{1} A_{n}. The points B2,,BnB_{2}, \ldots, B_{n} lie on a circle with diameter A1PA_{1} P. We will prove by induction that the Simson line of point PP with respect to the nn-gon A1AnA_{1} \ldots A_{n} coincides with the Simson line of point PP with respect to the (n1)(n-1)-gon B2BnB_{2} \ldots B_{n} (for n=4n=4 this was proven in part a). By the induction hypothesis, the Simson line of the (n1)(n-1)-gon A1A3AnA_{1} A_{3} \ldots A_{n} coincides with the Simson line of the (n2)(n-2)-gon B3BnB_{3} \ldots B_{n}. Therefore, the projections of point PP onto the Simson lines of the (n1)(n-1)-gons, whose vertices are obtained by sequentially excluding points A2,,AnA_{2}, \ldots, A_{n} from the set A1,,AnA_{1}, \ldots, A_{n}, lie on the Simson line of the (n1)(n-1)-gon B2BnB_{2} \ldots B_{n}. And the projection of point PP onto the Simson line of the (n1)(n-1)-gon A2AnA_{2} \ldots A_{n} lies on the same line because our reasoning shows that any n1n-1 of the considered nn projection points lie on a single line.

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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.