Find The Distance Between Their Centers

Geometry Level 5

In A B C , \triangle ABC, B C = 5 , C A = 7 , A B = 8. BC= 5, CA= 7, AB= 8. Let ω \omega and Γ \Gamma denote the circumcircle and incircle of A B C \triangle ABC respectively. A circle δ \delta centered at point P P is externally tangent to Γ \Gamma and internally tangent to ω \omega at A . A. Another circle centered at Q Q is internally tangent to both ω \omega and δ \delta at A . A. The length of P Q PQ can be expressed as a b c \dfrac{a}{b\sqrt{c}} for some coprime positive integers a , b a,b and a prime c . c. Find a + b + c . a+b+c.

Details and assumptions

  • This problem is inspired by an old USAMO problem.

  • This diagram is not mine. I took it off from the AoPS thread.


The answer is 36.

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

1 solution

Anh Vu
Jul 6, 2014

I have tried for literally a day to find a solution without using the inversion but failed in vain. So, here's the solution that I found, online, that uses the inversion technique. Apparently inversion is quite useful for solving difficult geometry problems like this (wikipedia: inversive geometry)

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Wiki/index.php/2007 USAMO Problems/Problem_6

For those who are not familiar with inversion, here's a helpful link: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Inversion.html

Anh Vu - 6 years, 11 months ago

Log in to reply

Or you could just do brute-force trig bash, which isn't very elegant. See my (or other) solutions here: http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?p=825515&sid=9aa3510d1478a15090a39621af94c1de#p825515

Sreejato Bhattacharya - 6 years, 10 months ago

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...