13. Place several points on the unit sphere such that the distance between any two points is (1) at least ; (2) greater than . Determine the maximum number of points and prove your conclusion.
Solution
13. (1) The maximum number of points is 6. If is one of these points, let's assume is at the North Pole, then the remaining points must all be in the Southern Hemisphere (including the equator). If there is only one point at the South Pole, then the rest of the points are all on the equator, in which case there are at most points.
If there is no point at the South Pole, it can be proven that the number of points does not exceed 5. Otherwise, there would be at least 5 points , in the Southern Hemisphere (including the equator). Let be the South Pole, and the arcs intersect the equator at . Then, among , at least one angle is less than or equal to . Suppose , then in the spherical triangle , the distance between any two points is less than , which is a contradiction. Therefore, the maximum number of points on the sphere is 6. (2) The maximum number of points is 4. The proof is similar to (1).