Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.7 AIME, harder Prove it

20.27. On a plane, there is a finite set of polygons (not necessarily convex), each two of which have a common point. Prove that there exists a line that has common points with all these polygons.

Solution

20.27. Let's take an arbitrary line ll in the plane and project all polygons onto it. In this case, we will obtain several segments, any two of which have a common point. Consider the left ends of these segments and choose the rightmost one (to make it clear what "right" and "left" mean, a direction needs to be defined on the line). The resulting point belongs to all segments, so a perpendicular line drawn through it to the line ll intersects all the given polygons.

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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.