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II OBM

Brazil geometry

Problem

Given a triangle and a point on the side . Construct points , , as follows: is the foot of the perpendicular from to , is the foot of the perpendicular from to and is the foot of the perpendicular from to . Show that the points converge to a point on and show how to construct .

problem
Solution
It is clear from the diagram that Hence , where . If we take the direction to as positive, then the signed distance may be positive or negative, but the series converges to , so is absolutely convergent and hence convergent. So the points converge to a point on the line .

Take any point on . Take as the foot of the perpendicular from to . Now take as the intersection of the lines through perpendicular to and through perpendicular to . Now is similar to the desired triangle . Since are collinear and are collinear, it follows that must be collinear. Thus extend to meet at

. It is now straightforward to construct , then .

Techniques

Triangle trigonometryConstructions and lociDistance chasingSums and products