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Spring Mathematical Tournament

Bulgaria geometry

Problem

A circle is called good colored if the vertices of any equilateral triangle inscribed in this circle are colored in distinct colors. Let be a circle with radius .

a) Is there a coloring of the points on and inside in three colors such that and any circle with radius at least that touches are good colored?

b) Is there such a coloring in seven colors?
Solution
a) Assume that such a coloring exists and , and are the colors. Let be the center of and consider an equilateral triangle with side . Its circumcircle has radius and touches . If the color of is , then the colors of and are and . This shows that the points of the circle are colored in and . Consider now an equilateral with circumcircle . Denote by and the intersection points of and with , respectively ( and the closer points to ). Since the circumcircle of the equilateral touches and has radius at least , it follows that the color of is . Analogously and have the same color, a contradiction.

b) Let be a regular hexagon inscribed in . Let the color of be , let the color of the points inside the sector , the radius and the arc without be , let the color of the points inside the sector , the radius and the arc without be , etc. It is easy to see that this coloring has the desired properties.
Final answer
a) No. b) Yes.

Techniques

TangentsCombinatorial GeometryColoring schemes, extremal arguments