Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 4.9 AIME Prove it Saudi Arabia

A rhombus of side length 1 and internal angle 60° is called a diamond. Suppose that a regular hexagon of side length nn is dissected into diamonds. Prove that each main diagonal of the hexagon halves exactly nn diamonds.

Solution

Divide the hexagon into 6n26n^2 triangular cells (in each dissection every diamond will consist of two of them) and consider a half HH of the hexagon (on one side on a fixed main diagonal dd).

Figure 1

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