Problem:
Our third and final item comes to us from Germany, I mean Geometry. It is known that a regular -gon can be constructed with straightedge and compass if is a prime that is plus a power of . It is also possible to construct a -gon whenever an -gon is constructible, or a -gon where the 's are distinct primes of the above form. What is really interesting is that these conditions, together with the fact that we can construct a square, is that they give us all constructible regular -gons. What is the largest less than such that a regular -gon is constructible?
Solution
Solution:
The known primes of this form (Fermat primes) are , , , , and , and the result is due to Gauss (German). If there are other such primes (unknown), then they are much bigger than . So for each product of these primes, we can divide by that number and take to find the largest power of to multiply by, then compare the resulting numbers. There are cases to check, or just observe that is so close that there's likely a shortcut. Note that is divisible by , and hence not prime. is smaller; replacing any of the factors by the closest power of only decreases the product, and there's not enough room to squeeze in an extra factor of without replacing all of them, and that gives us , so indeed that it is the answer.
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