In a regular tetrahedron consider planes that are parallel to its faces such that each edge is divided into 6 equal segments. These planes determine, on the edges of the tetrahedron, on its faces and in its interior a set consisting of 80 points of intersection. Denote this set by .
Find the maximum number of elements of a subset of the set , having the property: any three points of are not collinear and the plane generated by them is neither parallel with any of the faces of the tetrahedron , nor contains one of his faces.
Mihai Monea
Solution
Suppose, WLOG, that the height of equals . Denote by the maximal number of elements of the set and by its elements. For each denote by , and the distances from the point to the planes and respectively. Then . Because the sum of the distances from an interior point to the faces of a regular tetrahedron equals its height, we get that . Consequently, if , we get .
Let . As no more than two of the numbers can be equal, we deduce .
For even , , we have . So , and thus and . For odd , , we have . Thus , implying and .
To give an example of an 8-element set, use the notation as in the above considerations and consider as the set and .
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