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Geometry Difficulty 5.6 AIME, harder Prove it Belarus

Three of six segments (four sides and two diagonals of a parallelogram) are painted red, and three others are painted green.

Prove that one can construct a triangle using the segments of the same color as its sides.

Solution

Let BC=AD=aBC = AD = a, AB=CD=bAB = CD = b, AC=d1AC = d_1, BD=d2BD = d_2. Let for the definiteness ADC90\angle ADC \ge 90^\circ. Then d1>ad_1 > a, d1>bd_1 > b. Without loss of generality we suppose that aba \ge b. Then a+aa+b>d1d2a+a \ge a+b > d_1 \ge d_2. Exactly two cases are possible.

1. The diagonals have the different colors. If two adjacent sides aa and bb are painted the same color, then together with the diagonal of the same color they form the triangle congruent with (by three sides) either the triangle ADBADB or the triangle ADCADC. Now let two opposite sides aa and bb have the same color with one of the diagonals. Then one can construct the triangle with these sides and the diagonal as its sides since a+a>d1a+a > d_1 and a+a>d2a+a > d_2.

Figure 1

2. Both the diagonals are painted the same color, say green. Then one of the side is also green, and the side equaled green side and two remaining sides are painted red. If the sides aa, aa, bb are painted the same color, then one can construct the triangle with aa, aa, bb as its sides. It follows from the inequalities a+aa+b>ba+a \ge a+b > b. Suppose that d1,d2,ad_1, d_2, a are painted green and b,b,ab, b, a are painted red. One cannot form a triangle from the first triple only if d1a+d2d_1 \ge a+d_2 or d2a+d1d_2 \ge a+d_1 (since the inequality d1+d2>ad_1+d_2 > a certainly holds); one cannot form a triangle from the second triple only if a2ba \ge 2b. Let d1a+d2d_1 \ge a+d_2. Then

d_1 \ge 2b + d_2, i.e. AC \ge AB + BD + DC > AD + DC, a contradiction. Similarly, if d2a+d1d_2 \ge a + d_1, then d22b+d1d_2 \ge 2b + d_1, i. e. BDBA+CD+AC>BA+ADBD \ge BA + CD + AC > BA + AD, a contradiction.

Therefore, there always exist three segments of the same color such that one can construct the triangle with these segments as its sides.

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