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2017 AMC 12B Problem 13

Problem 13 of 25Intermediate

In the figure below, 33 of the 66 disks are to be painted blue, 22 are to be painted red, and 11 is to be painted green. Two paintings that can be obtained from one another by a rotation or a reflection of the entire figure are considered the same. How many different paintings are possible?

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Solution

Before accounting for symmetry, there are 6!3!2!=60\dfrac{6!}{3!2!}=60 paintings. The two nonidentity rotations partition the disks into two 33-cycles, so neither can fix a painting having color counts 3,2,1.3,2,1. Each of the 33 reflections fixes 22 disks and swaps the other 44 in 22 pairs. For a painting to be fixed, the lone green disk and one of the 33 blue disks must occupy the two fixed positions, in 22 orders. Of the two swapped pairs, either one can be the red pair, giving 22=42\cdot2=4 fixed paintings per reflection. Burnside’s Lemma therefore gives 60+3(4)6=12\dfrac{60+3(4)}{6}=12 distinct paintings. Thus, the correct answer is D.

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Concepts: casework · symmetry

Problem text and solution from the LIVE past-contest archive. See also the AoPS wiki page for community solutions.