GeometryDifficulty 7.2National olympiad, round 2Find the answer
The area of a convex pentagon ABCDE is S, and the circumradii of the triangles ABC,BCD,CDE,DEA,EAB are R1,R2,R3,R4,R5. Prove the inequality R14+R24+R34+R44+R54⩾5sin2108∘4S2.
A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.
Solution
First we prove the following Lemma 1. In a convex n-gon A1A2…An with area S we have 4S⩽AnA2⋅R1+A1A3⋅R2+…+An−1A1⋅Rn where Ri is the circumradius of the triangle Ai−1AiAi+1,A0=An,An+1=An. Let Mi be the midpoint of AiAi+1 for i=1,…,n. For each i we consider the quadrilateral formed by the segments AiMi and AiMi−1 and the perpendiculars to this segments drawn through Mi and Mi−1, respectively. We claim that these n quadrilateral cover the n-gon. Indeed, let P be a point inside the n-gon. Let PAk be the minimum among the distances PA1,PA2,…,PAn. We have PAk⩽PAk+1 and PAk⩽PAk−11, therefore P belongs to the n-gon and to each of the two half-planes containing Ak and bounded by the perpendicular bisectors to AkAk+1 and AkAk−11, that is, to the k-th quadrilateral. To complete the proof it remains to note that the area of the i-th quadrilateral does nor exceed 21⋅2Ai−1Ai+1⋅Ri. For our problem it follows that 4S⩽2R12sin∠A1+2R22sin∠A2+…+2R52sin∠A5. Applying Cauchy-Buniakowsky inequality, we obtain 2S⩽R12sin∠A1+R22sin∠A2+…+R52sin∠A5⩽(R14+…+R54)(sin2∠A1+…+sin2∠A5)⩽5(R14+…+R54)sin2108∘ thus 5sin2108∘4S2⩽R14+R24+…+R54. In the above inequality we made use of the following Lemma 2. If α1,α2,…,α5 are angles of a convex pentagon, then sin2α1+…+sin2α5⩽5sin2108∘. The sum in question does not depend on the order of the angles, therefore we may assume α1⩽α2⩽…⩽α5. If α1=108∘, then α2=…=α5=108∘, and the inequality turns to equality. If α1<108∘, then α5>108∘. Note that α1+α5<270∘ (if α1+α5⩾270∘, then α2+α3+α4⩽270∘, therefore α2⩽90∘, a fortiori α1⩽90∘ and thus α5⩾180∘, a contradiction). Then we have sin2108∘+sin2(α1+α5−108∘)−sin2α1−sin2α5=2cos(α1+α5)sin(α1−108∘)sin(α5−108∘)>0. It means that changing the angles α1 by 108∘ and α5 by α1+α5−108∘ increases the sum of squares of the sines. Iterating this operation, we shall make all the angles equal to 108∘, thus proving the inequality.
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