Let be a triangle with . Let be the incenter of . Points and lie on the interior of segments and respectively such that is tangent to the incircle. Given point such that find the length of .
Solution
Solution 1. Let tangent from to the incircle. We will invoke the dual of the Desargues Involution Theorem, which states the following: Given a point in the plane and four lines , consider the set of conics tangent to all four lines. Then we define a function on the pencil of lines through by mapping one tangent from to each conic to the other. This map is well defined and is a projective involution, and in particular maps , where is the complete quadrilateral given by the pairwise intersections of . An overview of the projective background behind the (Dual) Desargues Involution Theorem can be found here: https://www.scribd.com/document/384321704/Desargues-Involution-Theorem, and a proof can be found at https://www2.washjeff.edu/users/mwoltermann/Dorrie/63.pdf. Now, we apply this to the point and the lines , to get that the pairs are swapped by some involution. But we know that the involution on lines through which rotates by swaps the latter two pairs, thus it must also swap the first one and . It follows by equal tangents that is a square, thus where is the inradius of . Since , we have . Solution 2. Let be the orthocenter of . Lemma. , where is the inradius and is the circumradius. Proof. This follows from barycentric coordinates or the general result that for a point in the plane, which itself is a fact about vectors that follows from barycentric coordinates. This can also be computed directly using trigonometry. Let , then note that are concyclic on the circle of diameter , and are concyclic on the circle of diameter . Let be the second intersection of these circles. Since is a tangential quadrilateral, the midpoints of and are collinear with (this is known as Newton's theorem), which implies that by symmetry. Note that as lies on the radical axis of the two circles, which is . Thus, if , is the power of with respect to the circle centered at with radius , which implies . As with the first solution, we claim that , which by the lemma is equivalent to . Then note that so our claim holds and we finish as with the first solution. Note. Under the assumption that the problem is well-posed (the answer does not depend on the choice of , or ), then here is an alternative method to obtain by making convenient choices. Let be the point where is tangent to the incircle, and choose so that (and therefore . Note that is a valid choice for , so assume that is the foot from to . If is the point where is tangent to the incircle, then is a square so . (This disregards the condition that and are in the interior of segments and , but there is no reason to expect that this condition is important.)