Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.4 AIME, harder Prove it Slovenia

Find the smallest positive integer nn such that n2n^2 is a perfect cube, and n3n^3 is a perfect square.

Solution

Since nn is divisible by 2020, we can write n=22+a51+bkn = 2^{2+a} \cdot 5^{1+b} \cdot k, where kk is a positive integer divisible neither by 22 nor 55, while aa and bb are non-negative integers. If n2=22(2+a)52(1+b)k2n^2 = 2^{2(2+a)} \cdot 5^{2(1+b)} \cdot k^2 is a perfect cube, then 33 divides 2(2+a)2(2+a) and 33 divides 2(1+b)2(1+b). If n3=23(2+a)53(1+b)k3n^3 = 2^{3(2+a)} \cdot 5^{3(1+b)} \cdot k^3 is a perfect square, then 22 divides 3(2+a)3(2+a) and 22 divides 3(1+b)3(1+b). From this it follows that 66 divides 2+a2+a and 66 divides 1+b1+b, so aa is at least 44 and bb is at least 55. The smallest possible positive integer kk is k=1k=1. When this is the case, we get n=2656=1000000n = 2^6 \cdot 5^6 = 1000000. We see that n2n^2 is indeed a perfect cube and n3n^3 is a perfect square, and we have shown this nn to be the smallest possible.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.