In a plane of height 285, there are 12 circles. If any three circles have at least two circles that are disjoint, prove: there must be four circles among the 12 circles that are pairwise disjoint.
Problem 1192
Official solution
Prove (1) Take any six circles, and represent the six circles with six points.
If two circles are disjoint, connect them with a red line; if two circles are not disjoint, connect them with a blue line. It is easy to know that six points connected with two colors must contain a monochromatic triangle.
Given that there is no blue triangle, there must be a red triangle, i.e., among the six circles, there must be three circles that are pairwise disjoint.
(2) Let be the circle with the smallest radius among 12 circles. It can be proven: The number of circles not disjoint from is at most five.
If not, is not disjoint from .
Suppose one of is concentric with , without loss of generality, let be concentric with . Then, since is not disjoint from , and the radius of is greater than the radius of , hence are mutually not disjoint, which is a contradiction.
Thus, are not concentric with .
Let the points , be arranged in a counterclockwise direction around point . Since
there must be one of the six angles that is no greater than .
Without loss of generality, let . Then
Since is not disjoint from and , then and are disjoint. Therefore,
where represents the radius of .
Without loss of generality, let . Then , which contradicts the fact that is the circle with the smallest radius among the 12 circles.
Thus, the number of circles not disjoint from is at most five.
Therefore, among the 12 circles, there are at least six circles that are disjoint from .
By (1), among the six circles disjoint from , there must be three circles that are pairwise disjoint. Adding to these three circles, there are four circles that are pairwise disjoint.
Thus, the problem is proven.