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    Singapore Mathematical Society

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    David Wang
    This document contains solutions to a mathematics olympiad problem about tiling a polygon using triangles and squares. The solutions show that the polygon cannot be tiled if it has 3 or 4 sides, as this would require angles of 150 degrees at the vertices where shapes meet, which is not possible. It also shows that if the polygon is tiled, it must be made up entirely of triangles or entirely of squares, and cannot contain both shapes. This is because partial tilings would result in fractional areas, but the area must be an integer.

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    Singapore Mathematical Society

    Uploaded by

    David Wang
    20 views1 page
    This document contains solutions to a mathematics olympiad problem about tiling a polygon using triangles and squares. The solutions show that the polygon cannot be tiled if it has 3 or 4 sides, as this would require angles of 150 degrees at the vertices where shapes meet, which is not possible. It also shows that if the polygon is tiled, it must be made up entirely of triangles or entirely of squares, and cannot contain both shapes. This is because partial tilings would result in fractional areas, but the area must be an integer.

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    Errata_2018

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    This document contains solutions to a mathematics olympiad problem about tiling a polygon using triangles and squares. The solutions show that the polygon cannot be tiled if it has 3 or 4 sides, as this would require angles of 150 degrees at the vertices where shapes meet, which is not possible. It also shows that if the polygon is tiled, it must be made up entirely of triangles or entirely of squares, and cannot contain both shapes. This is because partial tilings would result in fractional areas, but the area must be an integer.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    20 views1 page

    Singapore Mathematical Society

    Uploaded by

    David Wang
    This document contains solutions to a mathematics olympiad problem about tiling a polygon using triangles and squares. The solutions show that the polygon cannot be tiled if it has 3 or 4 sides, as this would require angles of 150 degrees at the vertices where shapes meet, which is not possible. It also shows that if the polygon is tiled, it must be made up entirely of triangles or entirely of squares, and cannot contain both shapes. This is because partial tilings would result in fractional areas, but the area must be an integer.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
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    Singapore Mathematical Society

    Singapore Mathematical Olympiad (SMO) 2018


    (Senior Section, Round 2 solutions)

    1. (See Junior Section Round 2 Question 5 for the earlier part.) To complete the proof,
    we now show that n cannot be 3 or 4. First note that when a triangle and a square meet
    at the boundary, they meet at a vertex of the polygon and the angle at the vertex is
    150◦ . Thus if there are both triangles and squares at the boundary, there are two 150◦
    angles. This is not possible. Thus the boundary of the polygon formed consists entirely
    of triangles or squares. Therefore there are four possibilities: an equilateral triangle,
    a parallelogram , a trapezium both with angles 60◦ , 60◦ , 120◦ , 120◦ , and a rectangle.
    For the rectangle, the boundary consists of squares. Removing the squares from the
    bottom layer either leaves nothing or another rectangle. This means that no triangle is
    used, a contradiction. For the first three cases, the boundary consists of only triangles.
    The bottom level consists of triangles arranged as shown in the figure below. Removing
    these triangles leaves a smaller figure of the same shape. We conclude that no square is
    used. Therefore n cannot be 3 or 4.
    ................................................. ........................... ................................................. ........................
    ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... or ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
    ..... .......... .......... .....
    ......................................................
    ··· ..... .......... .....
    .................................... ..... .......... .......... .....
    ......................................................
    ··· ..... ..........
    ...................

    Alternatively, as before, there are four possible polygons. For the rectangle, the area A
    is an integer. The other three all have integral side lengths.
    √ Since the interior angles are
    ◦ ◦
    either √
    60 or 120 , the height is a rational multiple of 3. Hence the area is of √ the form
    A = q 3 where q ∈ Q. If m triangles √ and n squares are used, then A = n + m 3/4. If
    A is an integer, m = 0, and if A = q 3, n = 0. Thus only triangles or squares are used.

    31

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