Let be an integer. Two regular -gons and are given in the plane. Prove that the vertices of that lie inside or on its boundary are consecutive. (That is, prove that there exists a line separating those vertices of that lie inside or on its boundary from the other vertices of .) (Czech Republic)
Solution
In both solutions, by a polygon we always mean its interior together with its boundary. We start with finding a regular -gon which (i) is inscribed into (that is, all vertices of lie on the perimeter of ); and (ii) is either a translation of , or a homothetic image of with a positive factor. Such a polygon may be constructed as follows. Let and be the centers of and , respectively, and let be an arbitrary vertex of . Let be the vector co-directional to , with lying on the perimeter of . The rotations of around by multiples of form the required polygon. Indeed, it is regular, inscribed into (due to the rotational symmetry of ), and finally the translation/homothety mapping to maps to . Now we separate two cases. ! Construction of ! Case 1: Translation
Case 1: is a translation of by a vector . Denote by the translation transform by vector . We need to prove that the vertices of which stay in under are consecutive. To visualize the argument, we refer the plane to Cartesian coordinates so that the -axis is co-directional with . This way, the notions of right/left and top/bottom are also introduced, according to the - and -coordinates, respectively.
Let and be the top and the bottom vertices of (if several vertices are extremal, we take the rightmost of them). They split the perimeter of into the right part and the left part (the vertices and are assumed to lie in both parts); each part forms a connected subset of the perimeter of . So the vertices of are also split into two parts and , each of which consists of consecutive vertices.
Now, all the points in (and hence in ) move out from under , since they are the rightmost points of on the corresponding horizontal lines. It remains to prove that the vertices of which stay in under are consecutive.
For this purpose, let , and be three vertices in such that is between and , and and lie in ; we need to prove that as well. Let . The line through parallel to crosses the segment to the right of ; this means that this line crosses to the right of , so lies inside the triangle which is contained in . This yields the desired result.
Case 2: is a homothetic image of centered at with factor .
Denote by the homothety mapping to . We need now to prove that the vertices of which stay in after applying are consecutive. If , the claim is easy. Indeed, if , then the vertices of lie on the extensions of such segments beyond , and almost all these extensions lie outside . The exceptions may occur only in case when lies on the boundary of , and they may cause one or two vertices of to stay on the boundary of . But even in this case those vertices are still consecutive.
So, from now on we assume that . Now, there are two vertices and of such that is contained in the angle ; if there are several options, say, for , then we choose the farthest one from if , and the nearest one if .
Subcase 2.1: . In this subcase, all points from (and hence from ) move out from under , because they are the farthest points of on the corresponding rays emanated from . It remains to prove that the vertices of which stay in under are consecutive.
Again, let be three vertices in such that is between and , and and lie in . Let . Then the ray crosses the segment beyond , so this ray crosses beyond ; this implies that lies in the triangle , which is contained in . !
Subcase 2.2: . This case is completely similar to the previous one. All points from (and hence from ) move out from under , because they are the nearest points of on the corresponding rays emanated from . Assume that , and are three vertices in such that lies between and , and and lie in ; let . Then lies on the segment , and the segments and cross each other. Thus lies in the triangle , which is contained in .
Comment 1. In fact, Case 1 can be reduced to Case 2 via the following argument. Assume that and are congruent. Apply to a homothety centered at with a factor slightly smaller than 1 to obtain a polygon . With appropriately chosen factor, the vertices of which were outside/inside stay outside/inside it, so it suffices to prove our claim for instead of . And now, the polygon is a homothetic image of , so the arguments from Case 2 apply.
Comment 2. After the polygon has been found, the rest of the solution uses only the convexity of the polygons, instead of regularity. Thus, it proves a more general statement:
Assume that , and are three convex polygons in the plane such that is inscribed into , and can be obtained from it via either translation or positive homothety. Then the vertices of that lie inside or on its boundary are consecutive.