Problem:
Find all pairs of natural numbers such that .
Solution
Solution:
First we divide both sides of the equation by and get: .
Since and are natural numbers we immediately get that .
Since is divisible by and gives remainder upon division by , we conclude that must also give the remainder upon division by .
Since and is divisible by we see that must give remainder when divided by .
Thus has to be one of the numbers .
Corresponding 's are and , respectively.
Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track
puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.