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Regional Competition

Austria geometry

Problem

Let be a triangle with and circumcenter . The tangents to the circumcircle at and intersect at . The perpendicular bisector of the side intersects at .

a. Prove that the points , , , and lie on a common circle.

b. Prove that the line is parallel to the side .
Solution
Since and are perpendicular to and , the points , , and lie on a circle by Thales' theorem. By the central angle theorem we have . Since is an isosceles triangle, we find . Now , because an exterior angle of a triangle equals the sum of the other two interior angles. Thus and by the inscribed angle theorem we find that the points , , and lie on a circle . Since the circles and have the three points , and in common, we have and the points , , , and lie on a circle.

Finally we have , from which it follows that is parallel to .

Techniques

TangentsCyclic quadrilateralsAngle chasingTriangle centers: centroid, incenter, circumcenter, orthocenter, Euler line, nine-point circle