One has a long row of glasses and n stones in the central glass (glass 0). The following movements are allowed:
• Movement A If there is at least one stone in glass i and at least one in glass i+1, one may make one stone in glass i+1 jump to glass i−1, eliminating one stone in glass i.
• Movement B If there are at least two stones in glass i one may make a stone in glass i jump to glass i + 2 and make another stone jump to glass i - 1.
Prove the following: performing movements A and B for a sufficiently long time, one shall always obtain a configuration from which neither movements are allowed anymore. Besides this final configuration does not depend on the choices of movements during the process.
Solution
Assign x′ to a stone in the ith glass. Let's consider what happens to the sum of the number assigned to all stones with each movement.
Movement A replaces xi+xi+1 with xi−1; movement B replaces 2xi with xi−1+xi+2. So the difference in the sum is either xi−1(1−x−x2) or xi−1(1+x3−2x)=xi−1(1−x−x2)(1−x).
Choose x so that 1−x−x2=0, say x=ϕ−1=25−1. Then the sum S of the numbers assigned to the stones always stays the same. There is a number xk such that S<xk, so there is a limit to the leftmost stone, so it won't move after a while. Now consider the sum without this stone; the leftmost stone (that is, the second leftmost stone overall) won't move after a while and so on. So the configuration will remain constant at some time, that is, there won't be any two stones in the same glass nor two stones in two consecutive glasses.
Now notice that the representation of S in base ϕ−1 (all digits equal to one, no two consecutive ones) is unique: suppose on the contrary that there are two such representations and let k be the first position from left to right in which those representations differ. This means that ϕ−k is equal to the sum of some numbers of the form ϕ−m for m>k+1. But ∑m=k+2∞ϕ−m=1−ϕ−1ϕ−k−2=ϕ−k, so this isn't possible. So the final configuration is unique.
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