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Geometry Difficulty 7.1 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it

A convex polygon is partitioned into parallelograms. A vertex of the polygon is called [i]good[/i] if it belongs to exactly one parallelogram. Prove that there are more than two good vertices.

Solution

1. Understanding the Problem:
We need to prove that in a convex polygon partitioned into parallelograms, there are more than two vertices that belong to exactly one parallelogram (good vertices).

2. Lemma:
We start by considering the angles formed by the sides of the polygon and the parallelograms. Let the two marked angles be α\alpha and β\beta. Since the parallelograms are non-intersecting, the sum of the angles at any vertex of the polygon must be at least 180180^\circ.

3. Angle Sum Analysis:
For a convex nn-gon, the sum of the interior angles is given by:
180(n2) degrees 180(n-2) \text{ degrees}
If we assume there are only two good vertices, then the remaining n2n-2 vertices must each belong to at least two parallelograms.

4. Contradiction Setup:
Assume for contradiction that there are only two good vertices. This means that the sum of the angles at the non-good vertices must be at least 180180^\circ each. Summing these angles for all nn vertices, we get:
i=1nanglei180n \sum_{i=1}^{n} \text{angle}_i \geq 180n
However, this sum includes the angles at the good vertices twice, so we need to subtract the excess.

5. Overcounting Adjustment:
The sum of the interior angles of the nn-gon is:
180(n2) degrees 180(n-2) \text{ degrees}
If we subtract the sum of the angles at the good vertices (which is less than 360360^\circ), we get:
180nsum of angles at good vertices>180(n2) 180n - \text{sum of angles at good vertices} > 180(n-2)
This implies:
180nsum of angles at good vertices>180n360 180n - \text{sum of angles at good vertices} > 180n - 360
Simplifying, we get:
sum of angles at good vertices<360 \text{sum of angles at good vertices} < 360
This is a contradiction because the sum of the angles at the good vertices should be exactly 360360^\circ if there are only two good vertices.

6. Conclusion:
Therefore, our assumption that there are only two good vertices must be false. Hence, there must be more than two good vertices in the convex polygon partitioned into parallelograms.

\blacksquare

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.