If we have a collection of points in space, we may reflect a point of the collection in another point of the collection and add the image of this to the collection.
If we start with a collection consisting of seven of the eight vertices of a cube, can we get the eighth vertex in the collection after a finite number of steps?
Solution
When we reflect a point on the number line in a point , we get the reflected point . The same applies to points in space: if we reflect an arbitrary point in a point , we get .
We now consider only points with integer coordinates. No matter which grid point ( ) we choose, the coordinates of the image of all have the same parity as the coordinates of . There are different possibilities for the parity combinations of the grid points. We can thus color the points of our grid with 8 colors, such that the color of a point is invariant under reflection in any grid point.
Consider now the cube with vertices , . These vertices each have a different color in the aforementioned coloring. Therefore, if one vertex is missing, we cannot obtain it by repeatedly reflecting one of the other vertices, because you only get points of a color you already had.