How many different regular pair-wise non-similar sided polygons with fixed side length exist if self-intersecting is allowed?
Express your answer in form , submit . (Euler's Totient Function of )
Note: is the largest known Mersenne Prime.
Bonus: Generalize this for any number of sides.
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Imagine N points equally spaced on a circle. Imagine what is formed when each point is joined to another point, a fixed number n of points clockwise round from the preceding point. If n = 1 , each point is simply joined to its successor, forming the convex regular N -gon. If n = 2 , alternate points are joined, and so forth.
If n and N share a nontrivial common factor, then the resulting pattern is not a single polygon. For example, if N = 6 and n = 2 then the resulting shape is the "star of David" which consists of two superimposed triangles. Thus we obtain a single polygon provided that n and N are coprime.
Thus. if N is odd, a total of ϕ ( N ) number of choices of n exist which form a single regular polygon. This double-counts the number of possible polygons (joining every n th vertex is similar to joining every ( N − n ) th vertex). Thus there are X N = 2 1 ϕ ( N ) possible polygons.
If N = 2 p − 1 is a Mersenne prime, then X N = 2 1 ( N − 1 ) = 2 p − 1 − 1 , and so the number of polygons is 2 n − 1 , where n = p − 1 . Thus ϕ ( n + 1 ) = ϕ ( p ) = p − 1 . This makes the answer to this question 7 4 2 0 7 2 8 0 .