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Rioplatense Mathematical Olympiad

Argentina counting and probability

Problem

We have 10 bottles, each with 1-liter capacity. Initially, 9 of them are empty and the other is completely filled with orange juice. A move consists of picking a non-empty bottle, dividing its content into 3 equal parts, and placing these 3 parts in any 3 bottles. Is it possible, after a sequence of moves, that all 10 bottles contain the same amount of orange juice?
Solution
The answer is no. We will show that, at all times, the amount of liters of orange juice in any bottle can be represented as for some nonnegative integers . This is clearly true at the beginning of the process. On each move, we pick one bottle that has and add to three bottles. Assuming one of these bottles previously contained litres of orange juice, after our move that bottle ends up with , proving it will still be of the desired form. Since cannot be represented in such a way, because 10 is not a power of 3, this proves that it is not possible that all bottles end up with the same amount of orange juice.
Final answer
No

Techniques

Invariants / monovariants