Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.3 AIME, harder Prove it Thailand

Each point of the plane is colored either red or blue. Show that there exists a triangle with side lengths 11, 22, 3\sqrt{3}, and its three vertices are of the same color.

Solution

Assume on the contrary that there is a coloring for which any triangle with side lengths 11, 22, 3\sqrt{3} has at least one red vertex and one blue vertex. Consider an equilateral triangle ABCABC with side length 22.

Figure 1

There are at least two vertices among AA, BB, CC with the same color, let them be BB, CC with red color.
Let DD, EE be the midpoints of ABAB, ACAC, respectively, and let DD', EE' be their reflections with respect to the line BCBC. The triangles BDCBDC, BECBEC, BDCBD'C, BECBE'C all have side lengths 11, 22, 3\sqrt{3}, and so the vertices DD, EE, DD', EE' are of blue color. However, the triangle DDEDD'E has side lengths 11, 22, 3\sqrt{3} but all of its vertices are of blue color, which is a contradiction.

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