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Algebra Difficulty 6.7 National Olympiad Prove it Italy

A flea is initially on a vertex of a regular polygon with 2015 sides; it performs a sequence of jumps counterclockwise: on the first jump it moves by one vertex (from the starting one to the neighboring one), on the second by three, on the third by five, and so on, so that on the nn-th it starts from a vertex and lands 2n12 n-1 vertices further, always counterclockwise. After how many jumps will it happen for the first time that the flea lands on a vertex it had already visited?

Solution

The answer is 48. We observe that after nn steps the flea has covered a total distance of n2n^{2} vertices from the starting point: this is clearly true for n=0n=0 and n=1n=1, and moreover, if after nn steps the flea has covered a distance of n2n^{2} vertices, then on the next step the distance traveled will be n2+(2n+1)=(n+1)2n^{2}+(2 n+1)=(n+1)^{2}. Suppose then that the flea touches a vertex twice, the first time when the distance covered is m2m^{2}, the second time when it is n2n^{2}. This happens only if the difference between n2n^{2} and m2m^{2} corresponds to an integer number of laps of the 2015-gon, that is, if and only if 2015 divides n2m2=(nm)(n+m)n^{2}-m^{2}=(n-m)(n+m), and we are looking for the smallest nn for which this is possible. Let us take n,mn, m (with nn minimal) and write nm=ax,n+m=byn-m=a x, n+m=b y, with ab=2015a b=2015 and x,yx, y positive integers. We now note that x=y=1x=y=1: indeed, the numbers n=a+b2,m=ab2n^{\prime}=\frac{a+b}{2}, m^{\prime}=\frac{a-b}{2} are integers
( aa and bb are divisors of 2015, so both odd), and satisfy (n+m)(nm)=ab=2015\left(n^{\prime}+m^{\prime}\right)\left(n^{\prime}-m^{\prime}\right)=a b=2015, thus they provide a pair (m)2,(n)2\left(m^{\prime}\right)^{2},\left(n^{\prime}\right)^{2} corresponding to a vertex visited twice; now if xx or yy were greater than 1 we would also have n=a+b2<ax+by2=nn^{\prime}=\frac{a+b}{2}<\frac{a x+b y}{2}=n, which would contradict the minimality of nn. We therefore want to study the equation n2m2=2015=51331n^{2}-m^{2}=2015=5 \cdot 13 \cdot 31, and more precisely distribute the prime factors 5, 13, 31 between n+mn+m and nmn-m so as to minimize nn. It is then easy to see that the minimum is obtained for n+m=513,nm=31n+m=5 \cdot 13, n-m=31, which gives n=48n=48 and m=17m=17.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from it; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.