Two regular polygons have a common circumcircle. The sum of the areas of the incircles of these polygons equals the area of their common circumcircle. Find all possibilities of how many vertices can the two polygons have.
Solution
The ratio of the inradius and the circumradius of a regular -gon is . Hence the ratio of the areas of the incircle and the circumcircle of a regular -gon is .
Let a regular -gon and a regular -gon with a common circumcircle be given. W.l.o.g., let and the area of the common circumcircle be . By the above, the areas of the incircles of these polygons are and , respectively. As their sum must equal the area of the common circumcircle, we get the equation
which is equivalent to
As both and are larger than , both and are less than , whence the equation reduces to
Thus
implying that
If then ; if then ; if then , contradicting the assumption .
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