Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:
Determine the number of angles θ\theta between 00 and 2π2\pi, other than integer multiples of π/2\pi/2, such that the quantities sinθ\sin \theta, cosθ\cos \theta, and tanθ\tan \theta form a geometric sequence in some order.

Solution

Solution:
If sinθ\sin \theta, cosθ\cos \theta, and tanθ\tan \theta are in a geometric progression, then the product of two must equal the square of the third. Using this criterion, we have 3 cases.

- Case 1: sinθtanθ=cos2θ\sin \theta \cdot \tan \theta = \cos^{2} \theta. This implies that (sin2θ)=(cos3θ)\left(\sin^{2} \theta\right) = \left(\cos^{3} \theta\right). Writing sin2θ\sin^{2} \theta as 1cos2θ1-\cos^{2} \theta and letting cosθ=x\cos \theta = x, we have that x3+x21=0x^{3} + x^{2} - 1 = 0. We wish to find the number of solutions of this where x1|x| \leq 1. Clearly 1-1 is not a root. If 1<x0-1 < x \leq 0, we have that x2+x3x2<1x^{2} + x^{3} \leq x^{2} < 1 so x3+x21<0x^{3} + x^{2} - 1 < 0 and there are no roots. If 0<x10 < x \leq 1, then x3+x21x^{3} + x^{2} - 1 is a strictly increasing function. Since it has value 1-1 at x=0x=0 and value 11 at x=1x=1, there is exactly one root between 00 and 11, non-inclusive. There are 2 values of θ\theta such that cosθ\cos \theta equals this root, and thus, two solutions in this case.

- Case 2: sinθcosθ=tan2θ\sin \theta \cdot \cos \theta = \tan^{2} \theta. This implies that cos3θ=sinθ\cos^{3} \theta = \sin \theta. To find the number of solutions in this case, we can analyze the graphs of the functions in different ranges. Note that from θ=0\theta = 0 to θ=π2\theta = \frac{\pi}{2}, cos3θ\cos^{3} \theta decreases strictly from 11 to 00 while sinθ\sin \theta increases strictly from 00 to 11. Hence, there is one solution in this range. By a similar argument, a solution exists between θ=π\theta = \pi and θ=3π2\theta = \frac{3\pi}{2}. In the intervals [π2,π]\left[\frac{\pi}{2}, \pi\right] and [3π2,2π]\left[\frac{3\pi}{2}, 2\pi\right], we have that one function is negative and the other is positive, so there are no solutions. Thus, there are two solutions in this case.

- Case 3: cosθtanθ=sin2θ\cos \theta \cdot \tan \theta = \sin^{2} \theta. This implies that sinθ=sin2θ\sin \theta = \sin^{2} \theta, so sinθ=0,1\sin \theta = 0, 1. Clearly the only solutions of these have θ\theta as an integer multiple of π2\frac{\pi}{2}. Thus, there are no pertinent solutions in this case.

We can see that the solutions for the first two cases are mutually exclusive. Hence, there are 44 solutions in total.

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