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Czech Republic competition problems

Algebra Difficulty 5.7 AIME, harder Prove it Czech Republic

In a rectangle with dimensions 2×32 \times 3 there is a polyline of length 36, which can have self-intersections. Show that there exists a line parallel to two sides of the rectangle, which intersects the other two sides in their interior points and intersects the polyline in fewer than 10 points.

Figure 1

Solution

Consider an arbitrary line segment of the polyline and denote by dd its length and by xx and yy the lengths of its perpendicular projections on the sides of lengths 2 and 3, respectively. Cauchy-Schwarz inequality gives us
(2x+3y)2≤(22+32)(x2+y2)=13d2, (2x + 3y)^2 \leq (2^2 + 3^2)(x^2 + y^2) = 13d^2,
which means 2x+3y≤d⋅132x + 3y \leq d \cdot \sqrt{13}. Denote by XX and YY the total length of all the perpendicular projections of all the line segments on the sides of lengths 2 and 3, respectively. Summing up our estimations for each line segment gives us 2X+3Y≤36⋅13<1302X + 3Y \le 36 \cdot \sqrt{13} < 130. But then either 2X<402X < 40, or 3Y<903Y < 90. In the first case we would have X<20X < 20, so on the side of length 2 there is a point that is contained in fewer than 10 projections. A line perpendicular to this side at this point intersects the polyline at most 9 times. The other case is analogous.

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