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Local Mathematical Competitions

Romania geometry

Problem

Let be a circle in the plane and two points lying on it. We denote by the midpoint of and let be a new point on . Build circles and tangent to at and to at , respectively . Consider to be the point diametrically opposed to in . Prove that the circumcenter of lies on the line . Flavian Georgescu

problem
Solution
Let us begin by noticing that since is a diameter, we have , and if the circumcenter of would lie on , we could conclude that is tangent to the circumcircle of . Thus . Now since , , , are on , we have , so the problem is equivalent to . Then we must prove that and are isogonal conjugates in the triangle , thus the quadrilateral is harmonic, which means . This follows from the fact that since and are isogonal conjugates, we have From the sine theorem we know We also easily obtain from the fact that is midpoint, and thus

LEMMA (Archimedes). Let be a circle, and two points on it, and a point on . Let be one of the two circles tangent to at , and to at . Then is the angle bisector of .

Proof. Let us denote by and the centers of the circles , respectively . Let . Let us note that the triangles and are isosceles triangles in and , and that . We conclude that . Since we deduce , so indeed is the midpoint of arc .

Using this LEMMA we get ( to be the angle bisector of and ( the angle bisector of ), so from the angle bisector theorem .

Techniques

TangentsTriangle centers: centroid, incenter, circumcenter, orthocenter, Euler line, nine-point circleTriangle trigonometryIsogonal/isotomic conjugates, barycentric coordinatesPolar triangles, harmonic conjugatesAngle chasing