Problem:
Determine the number of angles between and , other than integer multiples of , such that the quantities , , and form a geometric sequence in some order.
Solution
Solution:
If , , and 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: . This implies that . Writing as and letting , we have that . We wish to find the number of solutions of this where . Clearly is not a root. If , we have that so and there are no roots. If , then is a strictly increasing function. Since it has value at and value at , there is exactly one root between and , non-inclusive. There are 2 values of such that equals this root, and thus, two solutions in this case.
- Case 2: . This implies that . To find the number of solutions in this case, we can analyze the graphs of the functions in different ranges. Note that from to , decreases strictly from to while increases strictly from to . Hence, there is one solution in this range. By a similar argument, a solution exists between and . In the intervals and , 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: . This implies that , so . Clearly the only solutions of these have as an integer multiple of . 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 solutions in total.