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Slovenian Mathematical Olympiad, 2008

Number theory Difficulty 5.0 AIME Prove it Slovenia

Find all integral solutions of the equation
x22+5y=7. \frac{x^2}{2} + \frac{5}{y} = 7.

Solution

If (x,y)(x, y) satisfies the equation then so does (−x,y)(-x, y). We can thus limit ourselves to only non-negative values of xx.

Multiply the equation by 2y2y to get x2y+10=14yx^2y + 10 = 14y. This implies y=1014−x2y = \frac{10}{14 - x^2}.

We see that 14−x214 - x^2 has to be a divisor of 1010, so −10≤14−x2≤10-10 \leq 14 - x^2 \leq 10, −24≤−x2≤−4-24 \leq -x^2 \leq -4 and 24≥x2≥424 \geq x^2 \geq 4. Since we have assumed that x≥0x \geq 0, we get 5>x≥25 > x \geq 2.

When x=2x = 2 we have y=1y = 1, when x=3x = 3 we have y=2y = 2 and when x=4x = 4 we have y=−5y = -5.

Hence, the only integral solutions of the equation are (2,1)(2, 1), (3,2)(3, 2), (4,−5)(4, -5), (−2,1)(-2, 1), (−3,2)(-3, 2) and (−4,−5)(-4, -5).

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