Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 6.6 National Olympiad Prove it Croatia

Outside a regular polygon A1A2AnA_1A_2\dots A_n a point BB is given so that A1A2BA_1A_2B is a regular triangle. Determine all nn such that points BB, A2A_2 and A3A_3 are consecutive vertices of some regular polygon.

Solution

Let the new polygon have mm vertices. Two cases are possible:
Figure 1
Figure 2

Case 1. The new polygon lies outside the given polygon. In other words, mm-gon and nn-gon are on opposite sides of the line A2A3A_2A_3.
In this case BA2A3+A1A2A3+60=360\angle BA_2A_3 + \angle A_1A_2A_3 + 60^\circ = 360^\circ.
n2n180+m2m180+60=360 \frac{n-2}{n} \cdot 180^\circ + \frac{m-2}{m} \cdot 180^\circ + 60^\circ = 360^\circ
3m(n2)+3n(m2)+mn=6mn 3m(n-2) + 3n(m-2) + mn = 6mn
mn6m=6n mn - 6m = 6n
m=6nn6=6+36n6. m = \frac{6n}{n-6} = 6 + \frac{36}{n-6}.
Obviously n6Nn-6 \in \mathbb{N} and n6n-6 divides 3636.
Checking all the possibilities we find nine solutions:

n - 6123469121836
n789101215182442
m422418151210987

Case 2. The observed mm-gon and nn-gon are on the same side of the line A2A3A_2A_3.
In this case we have BA2A3=A1A2A3+60\angle BA_2A_3 = \angle A_1A_2A_3 + 60^\circ
m2m180=60+n2n1803n(m2)=mn+3m(n2)6n+nm=6mn=6mm+6=636m+6. \begin{aligned} \frac{m-2}{m} \cdot 180^\circ &= 60^\circ + \frac{n-2}{n} \cdot 180^\circ \\ 3n(m-2) &= mn + 3m(n-2) \\ 6n + nm &= 6m \\ n &= \frac{6m}{m+6} = 6 - \frac{36}{m+6}. \end{aligned}
Since n3n \ge 3, 36m+6\frac{36}{m+6} must belong to {1,2,3}\{1, 2, 3\}. From there we get another three solutions
m+6361812m30126n543 \begin{array}{c|ccc} m+6 & 36 & 18 & 12 \\ m & 30 & 12 & 6 \\ n & 5 & 4 & 3 \end{array}

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.