2019 AMC 10 A
Complete problem set with solutions and individual problem pages
A rectangular floor that is feet wide and feet long is tiled with onefoot square tiles. A bug walks from one corner to the opposite corner in a straight line. Including the first and the last tile, how many tiles does the bug visit? (2019 AMC 10A Problem, Question#10)
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The number of tiles the bug visits is equal to plus the number of times it crosses a horizontal or vertical line. As it must cross horizontal lines and vertical lines, it must be that the bug visits a total of squares.
Note: The general formula for this is , because it is the number of vertical/horizontal lines crossed minus the number of corners crossed (to avoid double counting). In this particular problem, it was (since ), which is , but then you add because the first tile and the last tile are counted, which in the general formula are not counted.
We draw a diagram (optionally with grid paper and/or a ruler), then simply count the number of tiles the path crosses. To make this slightly easier, we can divide the full grid into sections, and just draw one of these feet by feet sections.
While it appears that the line we drew comes very close to several points, we know that since and are relatively prime, it will not actually pass through any of these points, so the total number of squares crossed will be the same regardless of which side we count. If we count from the diagram, we get squares, giving a total of .
