Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /46 of 65

Geometry Difficulty 6.2 National Olympiad Prove it Bulgaria

Problem:

Prove that amongst any 9 vertices of a regular 26-gon there are three which are vertices of an isosceles triangle. Do there exist 8 vertices such that no three of them are vertices of an isosceles triangle?

Solution

Solution:

LEMMA. For any five vertices of a regular 13-gon there exists an isosceles triangle with vertices amongst these points.

Proof of the lemma. Let the five points form a convex pentagon ABCDEABCDE. We first consider the case when there exist two pairs of parallel lines determined by some vertices of ABCDEABCDE. We have the following possibilities:

1) There are two pairs of parallel sides of ABCDEABCDE—for example AECDAE \parallel CD and BCDEBC \parallel DE. Then we have AED=BCD\angle AED = \angle BCD or AED=180BCD\angle AED = 180^\circ - \angle BCD, i.e. sinAED=sinBCD\sin \angle AED = \sin \angle BCD. Hence AD=2RsinAED=2RsinBCD=BDAD = 2R \sin \angle AED = 2R \sin \angle BCD = BD and therefore the triangle ABD\triangle ABD is isosceles.

2) There are two diagonals that are parallel respectively to two sides of ABCDEABCDE. Without loss of generality we may assume that ABCEAB \parallel CE. If ACDEAC \parallel DE we conclude as in 1) that BC=CDBC = CD. If ADBCAD \parallel BC, then EB=BDEB = BD. The cases BECDBE \parallel CD and BDAEBD \parallel AE are similar.

3) There is a diagonal of ABCDEABCDE that is parallel to its side and a pair of parallel sides of ABCDEABCDE. Without loss of generality we may assume that ABCEAB \parallel CE. Since AEAE is not parallel to BCBC (otherwise ABCEABCE is a rectangle with vertices amongst the vertices of a regular 13-gon) we may assume that DEBCDE \parallel BC. Then DC=CADC = CA.

Let us now assume that there exists at most one pair of parallel lines determined by some vertices of ABCDEABCDE. Since the vertices of ABCDEABCDE determine 10 lines, at least 9 of them are not parallel to each other. Consider the 9 pairs of vertices determining such lines. Every such pair is a base of an isosceles triangle whose third vertex is a vertex of the 13-gon. Note that all such third vertices are different because no two of the bases are parallel. Hence at least one of these 9 vertices is a vertex of ABCDEABCDE and this proves the existence of the desired isosceles triangle. This completes the proof of the lemma.

The regular 26-gon is formed by two disjoint regular 13-gons. If we choose 9 of its vertices then at least 5 of them are vertices of one of these 13-gons. Then it follows from the lemma that there exists an isosceles triangle with vertices amongst the vertices of this 13-gon.

Finally, note that there exist 8 vertices such that no three of them form an isosceles triangle. For example, if the vertices are labelled from 1 to 26, then we choose the vertices 1,2,4,5,10,11,131, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 13 and 1414.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

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