The cube is cut into smaller cubes. of them are unit cubes (cubes of side ) and edges of another cubes are assigned integer numbers (different from ). Find the volume of the big cube.
(Serhiy Zhydkov)
The cube is cut into smaller cubes. of them are unit cubes (cubes of side ) and edges of another cubes are assigned integer numbers (different from ). Find the volume of the big cube.
(Serhiy Zhydkov)
Let's denote the edge of the big cube as and the edges of two not unit as and .
Then we have an equation:
Because , then , so .
Now let's find an upper bound of . It is clear that ,
which means that or . Then so .
Moreover,
The only thing that remains is to test on cube of integer numbers , which satisfy an equation , where is from to . As a result, we have the unique solution: .