Mock AIME 2 2006-2007 Problems/Problem 15

Revision as of 21:40, 22 November 2023 by Tomasdiaz (talk | contribs)

Problem

A $4\times4\times4$ cube is composed of $64$ unit cubes. The faces of $16$ unit cubes are colored red. An arrangement of the cubes is "intriguing" if there is exactly $1$ red unit cube in every $1\times1\times4$ rectangular box composed of $4$ unit cubes. Determine the number of "intriguing" colorings.

AIME 2006 P15a.png

Solution

In order to solve this we must first look at the 2D problem:

AIME 2006 P15b.png

In order to have exactly one red in each column and exactly one red in each row, one can select any square red in the first column, for the second column we can only chose from 3 to paint red, the third column we can only chose 2 and the last one we can only chose 1.

Therefore the total numbers of squares that can have exactly one red in each column and exactly one red in each row and one red in each row is exactly $4!$

Now we can use this information for the 3D problem by looking at each of these squares as levels of the cube starting with the first level that has 4! configurations.

AIME 2006 P15c2.png


See Also

Mock AIME 2 2006-2007 (Problems, Source)
Preceded by
Problem 14
Followed by
Last Question
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15


Problem Source