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Fall Mathematical Competition

Bulgaria geometry

Problem

A regular heptagon is given. The sides , , , , , and are called opposite to the vertices , , , , , and , respectively. If is an interior point of , we say that a line through and a vertex of intersects the boundary of at a good point if this point is interior for the side which is opposite to the vertex. Prove that for every point the number of the good points is odd.

problem
Solution
If intersects the segment in an interior point (i.e. we get a good point) then is interior for the triangle . The number of the good points which can be assigned to a fixed point is therefore equal to the number of the triangles amongst , , , , , and which contain as interior point.

These triangles determine 22 parts in the interior of (Fig. 1) as follows: Fig. 1 7 triangles with a side which is a side of , 7 quadrilaterals with one vertex which is a vertex of , 7 triangles with two sides which are sides of the quadrilaterals, 1 heptagon. Each one of these parts is common for exactly 1, 3, 5 or 7 of the triangles. Hence the number of the good points is 1, 3, 5 or 7.

Techniques

Combinatorial GeometryConstructions and loci