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Imagine there are $2$ coins $A$ and $B$, and $A$ has radius $2cm$ and $B$ has radius $1cm$. Imagine placing $10$ coins of $A$ in a chain, so that each coin only touches its neighbouring coins, and they must only touch tangentially (effectively creating a ring). Place coin $B$ anywhere on the chain. Now roll the coin once around the chain (maintaining contact with the chain) until it returns to exactly where it started. The shape of the chain is such that the coin touches every one of the letter discs during its motion.

How many times does coin $B$ rotate? (should be a decimal answer)

1 Answers 1

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We can think of the more general case of n coins A of radius $a$ and a coin B of radius $b$.

Firstly, we note that the chain encloses a regular polygon of n sides, since they must be tangentially touching. Therefore, the angle between a coin and its neighbours is given by the formula for the internal angles of a regular polygon, i.e.

$$ \theta = \frac{360º}{n}$$

This angle determines the length $L_\theta$ that a single point would be able to cover on each A coin:

$$L_\theta = \frac{\theta}{360º} 2\pi a$$

However, what we must find is the "walkable" length $L_W$ that coin B is able to cover on each A coin. Then, the total length covered could be found as $L_T=nL_W$ and the number of rotations of B could be obtained as $R=\frac{L_T}{2\pi b}$

The length $L_W$ can be calculated by considering the situation in which coin B is tangentially touching two A coins, since that is what restricts its motion. In that case, a triangle is formed between their centers such that each angle between the center of B and the center of the other A coin is given by

$$ \beta = cos^{-1}(\frac{a}{a+b})$$

From this, we just subtract twice the associated length $L_\beta=\frac{\beta}{360º}2\pi a$ from $L_\theta$ to find $L_W$, since the restriction applies to each covered A coin twice.

$$ L_W=L_{\theta}-2L_{\beta}$$

Therefore,

$$ L_T = nL_W = n(L_{\theta}-2L_{\beta}) = n\left(\frac{\theta-2\beta}{360º}2\pi a\right)=\\ =2\pi an\left(\frac{\frac{360º}{n}-2cos^{-1}(\frac{a}{a+b})}{360º}\right)=\\ =2\pi a - \frac{4\pi a n \ cos^{-1}(\frac{a}{a+b})}{360º} $$

and

$$R(a,b,n)=\frac{2\pi a - \frac{4\pi a n \ cos^{-1}(\frac{a}{a+b})}{360º}}{2\pi b} = \frac{a}{b} \left( 1-n\frac{cos^{-1}(\frac{a}{a+b})}{180º} \right) $$

We can then just plug your numbers into the equation to find

$$R(2,1,10) = \frac{2}{1} \left( 10 \frac{cos^{-1}(\frac{2}{3})}{180º} \right) = 2\times 10 \times \frac{48.19º}{180º} = 20\times 0.267 = 5.35$$

So it rotates approximately 5.35 times in your case.

It should be noted that this assumes $n\geq 3$.