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jmc

geometry senior

Problem

Let and be points on the coordinate plane. Let be a convex equilateral hexagon such that and the y-coordinates of its vertices are distinct elements of the set The area of the hexagon can be written in the form where and are positive integers and n is not divisible by the square of any prime. Find
Solution
The y-coordinate of must be . All other cases yield non-convex and/or degenerate hexagons, which violate the problem statement. Letting , and knowing that , we can use rewrite using complex numbers: . We solve for and and find that and that . The area of the hexagon can then be found as the sum of the areas of two congruent triangles ( and , with height and base ) and a parallelogram (, with height and base ). . Thus, .
Final answer
51