Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /3 of 6

Geometry Difficulty 5.9 AIME, harder Prove it Romania

A polygon is tiled with a finite number of triangles whose sides all have an odd length.
a) Prove that, if the polygon is convex, then its perimeter is an integer of the same parity as the number of triangles in the tiling.

b) Does the conclusion still hold if the polygon is not convex?

Solution

a) Let KK be the polygon under consideration. Since KK is convex, the tiling triangles fall into two classes: Those having all edges inside KK, and those having at least one edge on the boundary of KK. (If KK were not convex, there might also exist triangles having only parts of edges on the boundary of KK, and the conclusion may fail to hold — see part b).)
Every inner edge of a triangle is subdivided into one or more 'short' segments by (the boundaries of) some other triangles on the opposite side. Each short segment is shared by exactly two triangles. Notice further that every short segment lies along a

unique segment of maximal length which is a concatenation of non-overlapping inner edges coming from the triangles on the same side of that segment. Hence, the total length of the short segments along one of maximal length is integer. Consequently, so is the total length ss of all short segments.
Clearly, every outer edge (lying on the boundary of KK) belongs to a single triangle, and the total length of all outer edges is the perimeter of KK.
Finally, let tt be the number of triangles, and let SS be the sum of their perimeters. Since the sides of each triangle all have an odd length, tt and SS have like parities. By the preceding, the perimeter of KK is S2sS - 2s, and the conclusion follows.

b) The answer is in the negative. Let A,A,B,BA, A', B, B', in order, be distinct points on a line \ell such that AB=AB=1AB = A'B' = 1. Erect equilateral triangles ABCABC and ABCA'B'C', where CC and CC' lie on opposite sides of \ell. These two triangles tile the non-convex hexagon AACBBCAA'C'B'BC. Letting AA=BB=xAA' = BB' = x, the perimeter of the hexagon is 4+2x4 + 2x. If x=12x = \frac{1}{2}, the perimeter is 5 which is odd, and if x12x \neq \frac{1}{2}, the perimeter is not even an integer.

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 and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.