Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.7 AIME, harder Prove it Singapore

Find all 6-digit integers nn such that nn is a perfect square and that the number formed by the last 3 digits of nn is 1 more than the number formed by the first 3 digits of nn.

Solution

Let n=y2n = y^2 and xx be the number formed by the first 3 digits of nn. Note that yy is a 3-digit number. Then
y2=1000x+x+1=1001x+1(y1)(y+1)=7×11×13x. y^2 = 1000x + x + 1 = 1001x + 1 \quad \Rightarrow \quad (y-1)(y+1) = 7 \times 11 \times 13x.

Since y999y \le 999, not all of 7, 11, 13 can be factors of y1y-1. Thus we have 6 cases:

Case 1: 77y+1,13y177 \mid y+1, 13 \mid y-1. Then y+1=77α1000y+1 = 77\alpha \le 1000 and so α12\alpha \le 12. Testing α=1,2,,12\alpha = 1, 2, \dots, 12, we see that only α=11\alpha = 11 works. We get y=846y = 846 and n=715716n = 715716. The other 5 cases are 7×13y+1,11y17 \times 13 \mid y+1, 11 \mid y-1; 11×13y+1,7y111 \times 13 \mid y+1, 7 \mid y-1; 7y+1,11×13y17 \mid y+1, 11 \times 13 \mid y-1; 11y+1,7×13y111 \mid y+1, 7 \times 13 \mid y-1; 13y+1,7×11y113 \mid y+1, 7 \times 11 \mid y-1. They yield the solutions n=528529,183184,328329,75076,24025n = 528529, 183184, 328329, 75076, 24025. The 2 5-digit numbers are discarded and we have 4 solutions.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.