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Combinatorics Difficulty 7.9 National Olympiad, round 2 Find the answer

The 30 edges of a regular icosahedron are distinguished by labeling them 1,2,,301,2,\dots,30. How many different ways are there to paint each edge red, white, or blue such that each of the 20 triangular faces of the icosahedron has two edges of the same color and a third edge of a different color?

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

The number of such colorings is 220310=619173642242^{20} 3^{10} = 61917364224. Identify the three colors red, white, and blue with (in some order) the elements of the field F3\mathbb{F}_3 of three elements (i.e., the ring of integers mod 3). The set of colorings may then be identified with the F3vector\mathbb{F}_3-vector space F3E\mathbb{F}_3^E generated by the set EE of edges. Let FF be the set of faces, and let F3F\mathbb{F}_3^FbetheF3vectorspaceonthebasis be the \mathbb{F}_3-vector space on the basis F; we may then define a linear transformation T: F3EF3F\mathbb{F}_3^E \to \mathbb{F}_3^F taking a coloring to the vector whose component corresponding to a given face equals the sum of the three edges of that face. The colorings we wish to count are the ones whose images under T consist of vectors with no zero components. We now show that T is surjective. (There are many possible approaches to this step; for instance, see the following remark.) Let Γ\Gamma be the dual graph of the icosahedron, that is, Γ\Gammahasvertexset has vertex set Fandtwoelementsof and two elements of Fareadjacentin are adjacent in Γ\Gamma if they share an edge in the icosahedron. The graph Γ\Gamma admits a hamiltonian path, that is, there exists an ordering f1,,f20f_1,\dots,f_{20} of the faces such that any two consecutive faces are adjacent in Γ\Gamma. For example, such an ordering can be constructed with f1,,f5f_1,\dots,f_5 being the five faces sharing a vertex of the icosahedron and f16,,f20f_{16},\dots,f_{20} being the five faces sharing the antipodal vertex. For i=1,,19i=1,\dots,19,let, let e_ibethecommonedgeof be the common edge of f_iand and f_{i+1}; these are obviously all distinct. By prescribing components for e1,,e19e_1,\dots,e_{19}inturnandsettingtheotherstozero,wecanconstructanelementofF3Ewhoseimageunder in turn and setting the others to zero, we can construct an element of \mathbb{F}_3^E whose image under TmatchesanygivenvectorofF3F matches any given vector of \mathbb{F}_3^F in the components of f1,,f19f_1,\dots,f_{19}. The vectors in F3F\mathbb{F}_3^F obtained in this way thus form a 19-dimensional subspace; this subspace may also be described as the vectors for which the components of f1,,f19f_1,\dots,f_{19} have the same sum as the components of f2,,f20f_{2},\dots,f_{20}. By performing a mirror reflection, we can construct a second hamiltonian path g1,,g20g_1,\dots,g_{20} with the property that g_1 = f_1, g_2 = f_5, g_3 = f_4, g_4 = f_3, g_5 = f_2.Repeatingthepreviousconstruction,weobtainadifferent19dimensionalsubspaceofF3F. Repeating the previous construction, we obtain a \emph{different} 19-dimensional subspace of \mathbb{F}_3^F which is contained in the image of TT. This implies that TT is surjective, as asserted earlier. Since TT is a surjective homomorphism from a 30-dimensional vector space to a 20-dimensional vector space, it has a 10-dimensional kernel. Each of the 2202^{20} elements of F3F\mathbb{F}_3^F with no zero components is then the image of exactly 3^{10}$ colorings of the desired form, yielding the result.

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