Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /2 of 19

, 2021

Geometry Difficulty 4.6 AIME Prove it United States

Problem:
Suppose there exists a convex nn-gon such that each of its angle measures, in degrees, is an odd prime number. Compute the difference between the largest and smallest possible values of nn.

Solution

Solution:
We can't have n=3n=3 since the sum of the angles must be 180180^{\circ} but the sum of three odd numbers is odd. On the other hand, for n=4n=4 we can take a quadrilateral with angle measures 83,83,97,9783^{\circ}, 83^{\circ}, 97^{\circ}, 97^{\circ}.

The largest possible value of nn is 360360. For larger nn we can't even have all angles have integer measure, and 179179 happens to be prime.

So, the answer is 3604=356360-4=356.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.