Pinning Butterfly on Radical Axes

The applet below illustrates a solution to the traditional Butterfly Problem that was communicated to me by Giles Gardam, a member of Australia's 2007 and 2008 IMO teams, and is due to his mentor, Ivan Guo, who won a gold medal at IMO 2004.

In a circle T, two chords AB and CD intersect at the midpoint of a third chord PQ. AD meets PQ in X, BC meets PQ in Y. The task is to show that M is also the midpoint of XY.


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Reflect B and C and the circle T in M (by reflect in a point I mean a dilation by factor -1 about that point). B', C', and T' be the reflections of B, C and circle T, respectively. Note that as M is the midpoint of PQ, T' passes through P and Q.

By power of point M with respect to T, AM×BM=CM×DM.

Ivan Guo's proof of the Butterfly theorem

Thus AM×B'M=C'M×DM, so by converse of power of a point, AB'C'D is a cyclic quadrilateral. Let its circumcircle be T''.

We now consider the three radical axes of the three circles, which are PQ, AD and B'C', and concur by the radical axes theorem. Thus B'C' intersects PQ at X. The reflections of BC and PQ are B'C' and PQ, so considering their intersections, we have that X is the reflection of Y, thus M is the midpoint of XY.

Butterfly Theorem and Variants

  1. Butterfly theorem
  2. 2N-Wing Butterfly Theorem
  3. Better Butterfly Theorem
  4. Butterflies in Ellipse
  5. Butterflies in Hyperbola
  6. Butterflies in Quadrilaterals and Elsewhere
  7. Pinning Butterfly on Radical Axes
  8. Shearing Butterflies in Quadrilaterals
  9. The Plain Butterfly Theorem
  10. Two Butterflies Theorem
  11. Two Butterflies Theorem II
  12. Two Butterflies Theorem III
  13. Algebraic proof of the theorem of butterflies in quadrilaterals
  14. William Wallace's Proof of the Butterfly Theorem
  15. Butterfly theorem, a Projective Proof
  16. Areal Butterflies
  17. Butterflies in Similar Co-axial Conics
  18. Butterfly Trigonometry
  19. Butterfly in Kite
  20. Butterfly with Menelaus
  21. William Wallace's 1803 Statement of the Butterfly Theorem
  22. Butterfly in Inscriptible Quadrilateral
  23. Camouflaged Butterfly
  24. General Butterfly in Pictures
  25. Butterfly via Ceva
  26. Butterfly via the Scale Factor of the Wings
  27. Butterfly by Midline
  28. Stathis Koutras' Butterfly
  29. The Lepidoptera of the Circles
  30. The Lepidoptera of the Quadrilateral
  31. The Lepidoptera of the Quadrilateral II
  32. The Lepidoptera of the Triangle
  33. Two Butterflies Theorem as a Porism of Cyclic Quadrilaterals
  34. Two Butterfly Theorems by Sidney Kung
  35. Butterfly in Complex Numbers

Radical Axis and Radical Center

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