Show that the number of people who ever lived and made an odd number of handshakes is even.
Is it possible to trace the lines in the figures below in such a way that you trace each line only once?
Can you draw 9 line segments in such a way that each segment crosses exactly 3 other segments?
In every right-angled triangle the arm is greater than the hypotenuse. Consider a triangle \(ABC\) with right angle at \(C\).
The difference of the squares of the hypothenuse and one of the arms is \(AB^2 -BC^2\). This expression can be represented in the form of a product \[AB^2 -BC^2 = (AB - BC)(AB+BC)\] or \[AB^2 -BC^2 = -(BC - AB)(AB+BC)\] Dividing the right hand sides by the product \(-(AB-BC)(AB+BC)\), we obtain the proportion \[\frac{AB+BC}{-(AB+BC)} = \frac{BC-AB}{AB-BC}.\] Since the positive quantity is greater than the negative one we have \(AB+BC>-(AB+BC)\). But then also \(BC-AB>AB-BC\), and therefore \(2BC>2AB\), or \(BC>AB\), i.e. THE ARM IS GREATER THAN THE HYPOTENUSE!
In how many ways can you rearrange the numbers 1, 2, ..., 100 so the neighbouring numbers differ by not more than 1?
There are one hundred natural numbers, they are all different, and sum up to 5050. Can you find those numbers? Are they unique, or is there another bunch of such numbers?
Show that \(\frac{x}{y} + {\frac{y}{z}} + {\frac{z}{x}} = 1\) is not solvable in natural numbers.
There are six cities in Wonderland. Her Majesty’s principal secretary of state for transport has a plan of building six new railways. The only condition for these railways is that each of them joins some pair of cities having other four cities equally distributed on both sides of a line containing the segment of the railway. Is it possible to implement such a plan for some configuration of cities?
Each pair of cities in Wonderland is connected by a flight operated by "Wonderland Airlines". How many cities are there in the country if there are \(105\) different flights? We count a flight from city \(A\) to city \(B\) as the same as city \(B\) to city \(A\) - i.e. the pair \(A\) to \(B\) and \(B\) to \(A\) counts as one flight.
(a) In a regular 10-gon we draw all possible diagonals. How many line segments are drawn? How many diagonals?
(b) Same questions for a regular 100-gon.
(c) Same questions for an arbitrary convex 100-gon.