Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.2 AIME, harder Find the answer

Suppose ABCA B C is a triangle with circumcenter OO and orthocenter HH such that A,B,C,OA, B, C, O, and HH are all on distinct points with integer coordinates. What is the second smallest possible value of the circumradius of ABCA B C ?

A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.

Solution

Assume without loss of generality that the circumcenter is at the origin. By well known properties of the Euler line, the centroid GG is such that O,GO, G, and HH are collinear, with GG in between OO and HH, such that GH=2GOG H=2 G O. Thus, since G=13(A+B+C)G=\frac{1}{3}(A+B+C), and we are assuming OO is the origin, we have H=A+B+CH=A+B+C. This means that as long as A,BA, B, and CC are integer points, HH will be as well. However, since HH needs to be distinct from A,BA, B, and CC, we must have \triangle A B Cnotbearighttriangle,sinceinrighttriangles,theorthocenteristhevertexwheretherightangleis.Now,ifacirclecenteredattheoriginhasanyintegerpoints,itwillhaveatleastfourintegerpoints.(Ifithasapointoftheform not be a right triangle, since in right triangles, the orthocenter is the vertex where the right angle is. Now, if a circle centered at the origin has any integer points, it will have at least four integer points. (If it has a point of the form (a, 0),thenitwillalsohave, then it will also have (-a, 0),(0, a),and, and (0,-a).Ifithasapointoftheform. If it has a point of the form (a, b),with, with a, b \neq 0,itwillhaveeachpointoftheform, it will have each point of the form ( \pm a, \pm b).)Butinanyofthesecaseswherethereareonlyfourpoints,anytrianglewhichcanbemadefromthosepointsisarighttriangle.Thusweneedthecircumcircletocontainatleasteightlatticepoints.Thesmallestradiusthisoccursatis12+22=5.) But in any of these cases where there are only four points, any triangle which can be made from those points is a right triangle. Thus we need the circumcircle to contain at least eight lattice points. The smallest radius this occurs at is \sqrt{1^{2}+2^{2}}=\sqrt{5}, which contains the eight points (±1,±2)( \pm 1, \pm 2) and (±2,±1)( \pm 2, \pm 1). We get at least one valid triangle with this circumradius: A=(1,2),B=(1,2),C=(2,1) A=(-1,2), B=(1,2), C=(2,1) The next valid circumradius is \sqrt{1^{2}+3^{2}}=\sqrt{10}whichhasthevalidtriangle which has the valid triangle A=(1,3),B=(1,3),C=(3,1) A=(-1,3), B=(1,3), C=(3,1) $

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Source: Omni-MATH, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.