Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.2 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:

The points of the plane are colored in black and white so that whenever three vertices of a parallelogram are the same color, the fourth vertex is that color, too. Prove that all the points of the plane are the same color.

Solution

Solution:

Suppose not. Let AA be a white point and BB a black point. Their midpoint CC is one of the two colors; without loss of generality suppose CC is black. Now pick any point DD not collinear with A,B,CA, B, C, and construct EE so that CADEC A D E is a parallelogram. If D,ED, E are both white, then CADEC A D E has three white vertices and one black vertex, impossible; if they are both black, then CADEC A D E has three black vertices and one white vertex, impossible. So DD and EE are opposite colors.

But BCDEB C D E is also a parallelogram, since BC=AC=DEB C=A C=D E and lines BC,DEB C, D E are parallel. However, BCDEB C D E it has three black vertices and one white vertex. Thus we have a contradiction.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.