Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /23 of 82

Geometry Difficulty 4.8 AIME Find the answer United States

Problem:

An icosahedron is a regular polyhedron with twenty faces, all of which are equilateral triangles. If an icosahedron is rotated by θ\theta degrees around an axis that passes through two opposite vertices so that it occupies exactly the same region of space as before, what is the smallest possible positive value of θ\theta?

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

Solution:

7272^{\circ}

Because this polyhedron is regular, all vertices must look the same. Let's consider just one vertex. Each triangle has a vertex angle of 6060^{\circ}, so we must have fewer than 66 triangles; if we had 66, there would be 360360^{\circ} at each vertex and you wouldn't be able to "fold" the polyhedron up (that is, it would be a flat plane). It's easy to see that we need at least 33 triangles at each vertex, and this gives a triangular pyramid with only 44 faces. Having 44 triangles meeting at each vertex gives an octahedron (two square pyramids with the squares glued together) with 88 faces. Therefore, an icosahedron has 55 triangles meeting at each vertex, so rotating by 3605=72\frac{360^{\circ}}{5} = 72^{\circ} gives another identical icosahedron.

Alternate solution:

Euler's formula tells us that VE+F=2V - E + F = 2, where an icosahedron has VV vertices, EE edges, and FF faces. We're told that F=20F = 20. Each triangle has 33 edges, and every edge is common to 22 triangles, so E=3×202=30E = \frac{3 \times 20}{2} = 30. Additionally, each triangle has 33 vertices, so if every vertex is common to nn triangles, then V=3×20n=60nV = \frac{3 \times 20}{n} = \frac{60}{n}. Plugging this into the formula, we have 60n30+20=2\frac{60}{n} - 30 + 20 = 2, so 60n=12\frac{60}{n} = 12 and n=5n = 5. Again this shows that the rotation is 3605=72\frac{360^{\circ}}{5} = 72^{\circ}.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

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