Determine all composite positive integers with the following property: If are all the positive divisors of , then
National Competition
Solution
Since is a composite number, we have .
Let be the smallest prime that divides . We show by induction that
This is clearly true for and the induction step follows from and .
If we apply this formula to and multiply by , we get
The solutions of this quadratic equation are and . Since both options are at most 2, the only possibility is , and . Since has the required property, this is the only solution.
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