Show that there exists a convex hexagon in the plane such that the distance between every pair of vertices is an integer.
Solutions — 3
Solution 1
Let , , be the vertices of an equilateral triangle with sides of length inscribed in a circle. Obtain points , , by rotating the triangle so that lies on the minor arc . Let and . Applying Ptolemy's theorem to the cyclic quadrilateral , we get . Similarly .

Applying the Cosine Law to triangle and using that , we find that . We wish to find solutions of this with , rational and then scale up the diagram by an integer factor to obtain a hexagon in which all distances between vertices are integers. More specifically, we seek positive integers , , such that
i.e. . By trial and error, we may find that , , is such a solution. This leads to , and then . We now need to scale up the original diagram by a factor of .
Solution 2
The Pythagorean triple gives rise to two triples with a shared length: and . The corresponding triangles and can be put together as in the diagram below:

Reflecting this diagram in the line and then in the perpendicular bisector of , we obtain a hexagon as shown in the next diagram.
The only distance that remains to be checked is , but this is the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle with sides and , so .
Solution 3
Let be the point on the unit circle given by the angle and recall that
This means that the points and have rational coordinates whenever this is the case for the two points and . Also, recall that the length of a chord of the unit circle subtending a central angle of size is equal to . The consequence is that the chord has rational length whenever and both have rational coordinates.
Hence, when we pick points on the unit circle, all of the form where has rational coordinates, we obtain a convex -gon such that the distances between every pair of vertices is a rational number. Scaling up with the common denominator gives integer distances.
To construct explicit examples, recall that each Pythagorean triple gives rise to a point on the unit circle (and vice versa). For example, starting with
When we use , , scale up by the factor and use symmetry we arrive at the example from Solution 2.