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AustriaMO2011

Austria 2011 geometry

Problem

Two circles and with radii and are externally tangent in . The other end-points of the diameter through are named on and on . We choose two points and , one on each of the arcs on . (PBQA is convex.) Furthermore, is the second common point of the line and , and is the second common point of with . The lines and intersect in and and intersect in . Show that a point exists, that is common to all possible lines .

problem
Solution
A homothety with center and ratio maps onto . This homothety maps to , to , and to . It therefore follows that and are parallel, as are and . must therefore be a parallelogram (no two of these points can be equal), and the diagonals and have a common midpoint. It follows that the mid-point of is also the mid-point of all possible line segments , and this is therefore the required common point. qed

Techniques

HomothetyTangentsConstructions and loci