A Cubical grid

Consider the 512 points ( x , y , z ) (x, y, z ) with integer coordinates, where 1 x , y , z 8 1 \leq x, y, z \leq 8 .

How many cubes are there such that their vertices lie in the set of these points, and at least one of their faces is parallel to the x y , y z , xy, yz, or z x zx plane?


The answer is 802.

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1 solution

Tahmid Ranon
Nov 28, 2016

In this problem, we have to figure out what kind of cubes are allowed, and how many there are

Case 1: All the faces are parallel to the 3 planes.

This is easy to deal with:
7 × 7 × 7 = 343 7 \times 7 \times 7 = 343 cubes of length 1,
6 × 6 × 6 = 216 6 \times 6 \times 6 = 216 cubes of length 2,
5 × 5 × 5 = 125 5 \times 5 \times 5 = 125 cubes of length 3,
4 × 4 × 4 = 64 4 \times 4 \times 4 = 64 cubes of length 4,
3 × 3 × 3 = 27 3 \times 3 \times 3 = 27 cubes of length 5,
2 × 2 × 2 = 8 2 \times 2 \times 2 = 8 cubes of length 6,
1 × 1 × 1 = 1 1 \times 1 \times 1 = 1 cubes of length 7.
Hence, there are 784 cubes here.

Case 2: Exactly 1 face is parallel to the plane.

Consider the face of the cube that is parallel to the plane.
We know that this face is a square.
Since the cube is not parallel to the other faces, this means that the edges of the square are not along the grid lines.
Thus, the sides of the square are "tilted" like the figure on the left.
The vertices are still on lattice points.

In addition, by considering the normal direction to the face, we get that the side length of the cube must be an integer. This means that the side length of the square is also an integer, so the 2 red squares would not work. If we consider the square grid that exactly encompasses the face, we get small right triangles that have integer lengths, aka a pythagorean triples . If we consider the 3-4-5 triangle, we get the following squares that just fit in:

Let is clear that there are no other Pythagorean triples that we can use, to place within the 8 × 8 8 \times 8 grid,

Now, let's count the number of possible configurations in this case:
There are 3 possible faces to be parallel to (we chose the x y x-y plane at the start).
For each plane, there are 2 possible arrangements of the square (red and blue above).
Since the height of the cube is 5, the bottom face of the cube could be at z = 1 , 2 , 3 z = 1, 2, 3 .
Hence, there are 3 × 2 × 3 = 18 3 \times 2 \times 3 = 18 possible cubes.

Conclusion: The total number of cubes are 784 + 18 = 802 784+18=802

Very interesting question.

The solution can be cleaned up to be more direct. E.g. the red cube part can be expressed as

It is a necessary and condition that the base is a square of integer length. Hence, we are restricted to just having a square base formed by the 3 4 5 3-4-5 pythagorean triple (and use the image at the end).

Calvin Lin Staff - 4 years, 6 months ago

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thank you for helping me out :)

Tahmid Ranon - 4 years, 6 months ago

Great question and solution that you have :)

I've edited the solution to be concise and filled in a few minor gaps in explanation.

Calvin Lin Staff - 4 years, 6 months ago

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