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Geometry Difficulty 6.6 National olympiad Prove it Estonia

Inside a regular 2n2n-gon, an arbitrary point is chosen and connected to every vertex of the 2n2n-gon. The triangles obtained are colored alternately black and white so that triangles with a common side are of different color. Prove that the sum of the areas of all white triangles equals the sum of the areas of all black triangles.

Solutions — 2

Solution 1

If n=2n = 2, i.e., the 2n2n-gon is a square, then the claim holds because the base sides of white triangles are the opposite sides of the square and the altitudes lie on the same line, so the total area of white triangles is a half of the area of the square.

Assume in the following that n>2n > 2. Consider the regular nn-gon whose sides are obtained by prolonging all sides of the 2n2n-gon that belong to white triangles (see Fig. 16).

Figure 1
Fig. 16

Join the point chosen inside the initial 2n2n-gon with all vertices of the nn-gon. The altitude drawn in any white triangle coincides with the altitude drawn in the corresponding triangle in the nn-gon, while the ratio of the corresponding base sides equals the ratio of the side length of the 2n2n-gon and the side length of the nn-gon, denote it by cc. Thus the total area of white triangles is cSncS_n, where SnS_n is the area of the nn-gon. Analogously, the total area of black triangles is cSncS_n, too.

Solution 2

The claim of the problem is equivalent to the statement that the sum of the altitudes of black triangles drawn to the sides that coincide to the sides of the 2n2n-gon is equal to that of white triangles. Let OO be the center of the 2n2n-gon, AA be the point chosen inside, α\alpha be the angle between line OAOA and the line perpendicular to a side, and ll be the distance between OO and any side of the 2n2n-gon (see Fig. 17).

Figure 2
Fig. 17

Then the altitude of the corresponding triangle is lOAcosαl - |OA| \cos \alpha. The altitude of the next triangle of the same color can be expressed similarly but α\alpha is replaced with α+360n\alpha + \frac{360^\circ}{n}. Thus the sum of all altitudes of the triangles of the same color is nlOA(cosα+cos(α+360n)++cos(α+(n1)360n))nl - |OA| \cdot (\cos \alpha + \cos(\alpha + \frac{360^\circ}{n}) + \dots + \cos(\alpha + \frac{(n-1)360^\circ}{n})).

To show that the sum inside parentheses equals 00, multiply the sum by sin3602n\sin \frac{360^\circ}{2n}. Since cos(α+k360n)sin3602n=12(sin(α+(k+12)360n)sin(α+(k12)360n))\cos(\alpha + \frac{k \cdot 360^\circ}{n}) \sin \frac{360^\circ}{2n} = \frac{1}{2}(\sin(\alpha + \frac{(k+\frac{1}{2}) \cdot 360^\circ}{n}) - \sin(\alpha + \frac{(k-\frac{1}{2}) \cdot 360^\circ}{n})), a telescoping sum emerges and after reduction one obtains sin(α3602n)+sin(α+(n12)360n)=0-\sin(\alpha - \frac{360^\circ}{2n}) + \sin(\alpha + \frac{(n-\frac{1}{2}) \cdot 360^\circ}{n}) = 0. Hence for both colors, the sum of the altitudes of all triangles of this color is nlnl.

Remark. The sum cosα+cos(α+360n)++cos(α+(n1)360n)\cos \alpha + \cos(\alpha + \frac{360^\circ}{n}) + \dots + \cos(\alpha + \frac{(n-1) \cdot 360^\circ}{n}) in Solution 2 can also be computed as follows. Denote z=cosα+isinαz = \cos \alpha + i \sin \alpha, where ii is the imaginary unit and let zk=cosk360n+isink360nz_k = \cos \frac{k \cdot 360^\circ}{n} + i \sin \frac{k \cdot 360^\circ}{n}, k=0,1,,n1k = 0, 1, \dots, n-1. Then the sum under consideration is the real part of the complex number zz0+zz1++zzn1z \cdot z_0 + z \cdot z_1 + \dots + z \cdot z_{n-1}. Thus zz0+zz1++zzn1=z(z0+z1++zn1)=z(z10+z11+z12++z1n1)=zz1n1z11=z0=0z \cdot z_0 + z \cdot z_1 + \dots + z \cdot z_{n-1} = z \cdot (z_0 + z_1 + \dots + z_{n-1}) = z \cdot (z_1^0 + z_1^1 + z_1^2 + \dots + z_1^{n-1}) = z \cdot \frac{z_1^n - 1}{z_1 - 1} = z \cdot 0 = 0, whence the sum under consideration is equal to 00.

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