2004 AIME I Problems/Problem 8
Problem
Define a regular -pointed star to be the union of
line segments
such that
- the points
are coplanar and no three of them are collinear,
- each of the
line segments intersects at least one of the other line segments at a point other than an endpoint,
- all of the angles at
are congruent,
- all of the
line segments
are congruent, and
- the path
turns counterclockwise at an angle of less than 180 degrees at each vertex.
There are no regular 3-pointed, 4-pointed, or 6-pointed stars. All regular 5-pointed stars are similar, but there are two non-similar regular 7-pointed stars. How many non-similar regular 1000-pointed stars are there?
Solution
Uses PIE (principle of inclusion-exclusion).
If we join the adjacent vertices of the regular -star, we get a regular
-gon. We number the vertices of this
-gon in a counterclockwise direction:
A regular -star will be formed if we choose a vertex number
, where
, and then form the line segments by joining the following pairs of vertex numbers:
If , then the star degenerates into a regular
-gon or a (2-vertex) line segment if
. Therefore, we need to find all
such that
.
Note that
Let , and
. The number of
's that are not relatively prime to
is:
Vertex number and
must be excluded since otherwise a regular n-gon, instead of an n-star, is formed.
The cases of a 1st line segment of (0, m) and (0, n-m) gives the same star. Therefore we should half the count to get non-similar stars.
Number of non-similar 1000-pointed stars