Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /310 of 520

Geometry Difficulty 7.0 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it

carpeting

suppose that SS is a figure in the plane such that it's border doesn't contain any lattice points. suppose that x,yx,y are two lattice points with the distance 11 (we call a point lattice point if it's coordinates are integers). suppose that we can cover the plane with copies of SS such that x,yx,y always go on lattice points ( you can rotate or reverse copies of SS). prove that the area of SS is equal to lattice points inside it.

time allowed for this question was 1 hour.

Solution

1. Understanding the Problem:
We are given a figure S S in the plane such that its border does not contain any lattice points. We need to prove that if we can cover the plane with copies of S S such that any two lattice points x x and y y with distance 1 always go on lattice points, then the area of S S is equal to the number of lattice points inside it.

2. Initial Setup:
Let S S have xN x \in \mathbb{N} lattice points in its interior and area y y . We aim to show that y=x y = x .

3. Contradiction Assumption:
Assume for contradiction that yx y \neq x . Select some ϵ>0 \epsilon > 0 such that y[x(1ϵ),x(1+ϵ)] y \notin [x(1 - \epsilon), x(1+\epsilon)] .

4. Large Square Consideration:
Consider an arbitrarily large axis-aligned square of side length a a in the plane, where aN a \in \mathbb{N} . This square has approximately a2 a^2 lattice points inside it.

5. Lattice Points in the Square:
Since a a is large, the number of lattice points inside the square is at least (1ϵ2)a2 (1 - \epsilon^2) a^2 and at most (1+ϵ2)a2 (1 + \epsilon^2) a^2 .

6. **Copies of S S in the Square:**
Each of these lattice points is contained in a copy of S S . For at least (1ϵ2)a2 (1 - \epsilon^2)a^2 of these lattice points, the copy of S S containing it is entirely within the a×a a \times a square.

7. Area Calculation:
The total area of the copies of S S inside the square is then at least (1ϵ2)a2yx (1 - \epsilon^2)a^2 \cdot \frac{y}{x} and at most (1+ϵ2)a2yx (1 + \epsilon^2)a^2 \cdot \frac{y}{x} .

8. Contradiction:
For small enough ϵ \epsilon and large enough a a , the range [(1ϵ2)a2yx,(1+ϵ2)a2yx] [(1 - \epsilon^2)a^2 \cdot \frac{y}{x}, (1 + \epsilon^2)a^2 \cdot \frac{y}{x}] does not overlap with the range [(1ϵ2)a2,a2] [(1 - \epsilon^2)a^2, a^2] . This leads to a contradiction.

9. Conclusion:
Therefore, our assumption that yx y \neq x must be false. Hence, y=x y = x .

\blacksquare

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