Olympiad Maths Prep

Track / Stage 5 / 174 of 400 #774 of 2000

Problem 774

AIME late
Combinatorics Difficulty 5.4 Find the answer

Shapovalov A.V.

On the table, 28 coins of the same size are arranged in a triangular shape (see figure). It is known that the total mass of any three coins that touch each other pairwise is 10 g. Find the total mass of all 18 coins on the boundary of the triangle.

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Official solution

1+2+3==2+3+1 \begin{aligned} & 1+2+3= \\ & =2+3+1^{\prime} \end{aligned}

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First solution. Let's take a rhombus of 4 coins. As can be seen from the figure, the masses of two coins in it are equal. Considering such rhombi, we get that if we color the coins in 3 colors, as shown in the figure, then coins of the same color will have the same mass.

Now it is easy to find the sum of the masses of the coins on the boundary: there are 6 coins of each color there, and the sum of the masses of three differently colored coins is 10 g; therefore, the total mass of the coins on the boundary is 610=606 \cdot 10=60 g.
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Second solution. All coins except the central one can be divided into 9 triplets (see figure), and all internal coins except the central one can be divided into 3 triplets (see figure). Therefore, the coins on the boundary weigh as much as 9-3=6 triplets, i.e., 60 g.
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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic, difficulty and ordering added by this site.