[Math] Triangle Puzzle

puzzle

There are 12 different sticks in a bag of integral length. You pull out 3 sticks, and you CANNOT put them together to form a triangle. What are the shortest possible lengths of the 12 sticks? What is the shortest length of the longest stick?

THIS IS NOT A HOMEWORK QUESTION. WAS GIVEN AS A PUZZLE TO THINK ABOUT

Im really not sure how to go about this. All I am thinking is if the sticks are all multiples of each other?

Best Answer

The lengths of the sticks can be arranged in the nondecreasing series $(a_1,a_2,...,a_{12})$. The shortest length is $1$, so we can say, that in this bag there are two sticks with length $1$, so $a_1=a_2=1$

Now we can construct next pieces by taking two longest (last) sticks, summing their lengths and adding $1$ to obtain the smallest integer number larger than the sum of two other integers: $$a_{k+2}=a_k+a_{k+1}+1$$ we have then: $$a_{k+2}>a_k+a_{k+1} \geq a_i+a_j \,\,\,(i<j\leq k+1) $$ so if we get $3$ sticks, the longest is longer than the sum of the remaining two, so we can't arrange them to make a triangle.

The series is then $$(1,1,3,5,9,15,25,41,67,109,177,287)$$

We can also say, that the degenerate triangles doesn't count as triangles in this context. In this case we don't have to add $1$ to the lengths of two sticks in forst formula, so we have: $$a_{k+2}=a_k+a_{k+1}$$ and this is the recursive formula for Fibonacci series: $$(1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144)$$