Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /577 of 1394

Geometry Difficulty 5.2 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:

Is it possible for the projection of the set of points (x,y,z)(x, y, z) with 0x,y,z10 \leq x, y, z \leq 1 onto some two-dimensional plane to be a simple convex pentagon?

Solution

Solution:

It is not possible. Consider PP, the projection of (12,12,12)\left(\frac{1}{2}, \frac{1}{2}, \frac{1}{2}\right) onto the plane. Since for any point (x,y,z)(x, y, z) in the cube, (1x,1y,1z)(1-x, 1-y, 1-z) is also in the cube, and the midpoint of their projections will be the projection of their midpoint, which is PP, the projection of the cube onto this plane will be a centrally symmetric region around PP, and thus cannot be a pentagon.

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.