A lattice point on the coordinate plane is a point with integer coordinates. Find all positive integer such that there exists an -sided polygon having lattice points as vertices and all sides have equal length.
Solution
can be any even integer larger than .
We first consider the case when is odd. Let , where , be the vertices of the polygon in anticlockwise direction. WLOG assume . By using the homothety , we may assume the greatest common divisor of is . In particular, not all coordinates are even numbers.
Let and for , where the indices are taken modulo . It is given that for some constant .
* If , then both are even. Since are even, we easily deduce that all are even. This contradicts our assumption.
* If is odd, then . Thus, we have
which is a contradiction.
* If , then are odd. Thus, we have
which is a contradiction.
Therefore, it is impossible that is odd.
For even , we provide the following construction. The following quadrilaterals have the properties that each side has length , and two of the sides are vertical.
* (type I) a square with vertices
* (type II) a rhombus with vertices
* (type III) a rhombus with vertices
We can place copies of these quadrilaterals in the order types I, II, III, II, III, II, III, ... by translating them to the position such that the left edge of the next quadrilateral overlaps with the right edge of the previous one as shown. This gives an -sided polygon whose every side has length .
