2006 AIME I Problems/Problem 8

Problem

There is an unlimited supply of congruent equilateral triangles made of colored paper. Each triangle is a solid color with the same color on both sides of the paper. A large equilateral triangle is constructed from four of these paper triangles. Two large triangles are considered distinguishable if it is not possible to place one on the other, using translations, rotations, and/or reflections, so that their corresponding small triangles are of the same color.

Given that there are six different colors of triangles from which to choose, how many distinguishable large equilateral triangles may be formed?

Solution

Let $x$ denote the common side length of the rhombi. Let $y$ denote one of the smaller interior angles of rhombus $\mathcal{P}$ . Then $x^2\sin(y)=\sqrt{2006}$ . We also see that $\displaystyle K=x^2\sin(2y) \Longrightarrow K=2x^2\sin y \cdot \cos y \Longrightarrow K = 2\sqrt{2006}\cdot \cos y$ . Thus $K$ can be any positive integer in the interval $(0, 2\sqrt{2006})$ . $2\sqrt{2006} = \sqrt{8024}$ and $89^2 = 7921 < 8024 < 8100 = 90^2$ , so $K$ can be any integer between 1 and 89, inclusive. Thus the number of positive values for $K$ is 089.

2006 AIME I (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 7	Followed by Problem 9
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15
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2006 AIME I Problems/Problem 8

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