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2021 Fall AMC 10B Problem 21

Problem 21 of 25HarderGeometryCombinatorics

Regular polygons with 5,5, 6,6, 7,7, and 88 sides are inscribed in the same circle. No two of the polygons share a vertex, and no three of their sides intersect at a common point. At how many points inside the circle do two of their sides intersect?

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Solution

For a regular kk-gon and a regular nn-gon inscribed in the same circle with k<nk\lt n and no shared vertices, their boundaries intersect in 2k2k points. Each side of the smaller polygon is crossed twice by the boundary of the larger polygon. Therefore, sum over all pairs of polygons. The 55-gon contributes 2⋅52\cdot5 intersections with each of the 66-, 77-, and 88-gons. The 66-gon contributes 2⋅62\cdot6 intersections with each of the 77- and 88-gons. The 77-gon contributes 2⋅72\cdot7 with the 88-gon. The total is 3(10)+2(12)+14=68.3(10)+2(12)+14=68. Thus, the answer is E .
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Tagged: counting intersections · regular polygon · counting pairs

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