Two ants are moving along the edges of a convex polyhedron. The route of every ant ends in its starting point, so that one ant does not pass through the same point twice along its way. On every face $F$ of the polyhedron are written the number of edges of $F$ belonging to the route of the first ant and the number of edges of $F$ belonging to the route of the second ant. Is there a polyhedron and a pair of routes described as above, such that only one face contains a pair of distinct numbers? Proposed by Nikolai Beluhov
Problem
Source: Original RMM 2019 P5
Tags: combinatorics, polyhedron, edge, contest problem
21.06.2020 18:04
@below: no edge gets deleted, hence we don't need to worry about vertices having degree less than three. As an example, think about a tetrahedron: when you project on of the vertices on the opposite side, you get a triangle with a point inside that is connected to all three vertices; no edge gets deleted. In general, think about "smashing" the entire polyhedron in the interior of one of the faces.
21.06.2020 18:34
12.01.2022 15:40
huricane wrote:
However, $2E=\sum\text{vertex~ degrees}\ge 3W+4(V-W)$ What about the vertexs of degree 2?(When deleting edges,some vertexs of degree 2 may appear)
22.01.2022 14:59
huricane wrote:
@below: no edge gets deleted, hence we don't need to worry about vertices having degree less than three. As an example, think about a tetrahedron: when you project on of the vertices on the opposite side, you get a triangle with a point inside that is connected to all three vertices; no edge gets deleted. In general, think about "smashing" the entire polyhedron in the interior of one of the faces. What I mean is in Case1 you have deleted edges and merged faces.In this time,some vertices of degree 2 may appear.So if you use induction,vertices of degree 2 should be considered. But it seems that vertices of degree 2 can't be deal easily in Case2. Or in a simple way, do your induction hypothesis contain the vertices of degree2(that is,for all planar graphs),or only for a projection whose vertices' degree is at least 3? If contains vertices of deg2 then the proof of Case 2 may be wrong.If not,on Case 1 you merge F1 and F2 delete the edge,this time this graph may have vertices of deg2 then you can't use induction hypo. Clear enough?