Maths Olympiad Prep

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, 2011

Number theory Difficulty 4.9 AIME Prove it South Africa

Does there exist a natural number NN which is a power of 22 such that the digits of NN can be permuted to form a power of 22 different from NN?

Solution

Suppose that the digits of 2a2^a can be rearranged to form 2b2^b, with a>ba > b. Then, since the two numbers have the same digit set, it follows that they're congruent modulo 99. Hence 92a2b=2b(2ab1)9 \mid 2^a - 2^b = 2^b(2^{a-b} - 1) and so 2ab912^{a-b} \equiv_9 1. However, the smallest positive power of 22 with this property is 262^6, so ab6a-b \ge 6. But in that case, 2a2b+6=642b>102b2^a \ge 2^{b+6} = 64 \cdot 2^b > 10 \cdot 2^b, which means that 2a2^a and 2b2^b can't have the same number of digits, a contradiction. So no such pair exists.

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