How many ways are there to cut a cube into tetrahedron with following properties?
(1) Every vertex of is one of the vertices of .
(2) For every , the intersection of and is a common face of them, a common edge of them, a common vertex of them or empty.
, 2007
Solution
Consider a division of cube into with properties in the problem. Then one of the below holds.
* and is a face of a tetrahedron.
* and is a face of a tetrahedron.
By symmetry we can get the answer by counting the former case and double it. Assume that has as its face. Then is , , or .
There must be another tetrahedron with face . is or .
There must be another tetrahedron with face . is or .
i. .
There must be . Then we need to count the ways of dividing the square pyramid . There are 2 ways: and .
ii. .
We need to count the ways of dividing the triangle prism such that each of and is a face of a tetrahedron. There are 3 ways: , and .
So there are 5 ways in the case .
There must be . Then we need to count the ways of dividing the triangle prism such that each of and . There are 3 ways, as we counted in (1)(a)ii.
Therefore, we have 8 ways in the case .
(2) .
There must be another tetrahedron with face . is , , or .
(a) .
There is only 1 way: the remaining tetrahedron must be , and .
(b) .
These 3 cases are all congruent, so we only have to consider the case . Since if we remove and from , there remains a shape congruent to the case and removed, there are 5 ways to divide the remaining shape, as we counted in (1)(a). So there are 15 ways in this case.
Therefore we have 16 ways in the case .
(3) .
Same as . We have 8 ways.
(4) .
There must be . Since if we remove and from , there remains a shape congruent to the case and removed, there are 5 ways to divide the remaining shape, as we counted in (1)(a).
By these, we get the answer .