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Algebra Difficulty 3.9 AMC 10/12 Find the answer Italy

Let a<b<ca < b < c be positive integers such that a2+b2+c2a^{2} + b^{2} + c^{2} has the same number of decimal digits as a+b+ca + b + c. What is the maximum value that cc can take?

Pick one

Solution

The answer is (A). The condition that a+b+ca + b + c has the same number of digits as a2+b2+c2a^{2} + b^{2} + c^{2} implies that
a2+b2+c2a+b+c<10 \frac{a^{2} + b^{2} + c^{2}}{a + b + c} < 10
Therefore we must have that
a210a+b210b+c210c<0 a^{2} - 10a + b^{2} - 10b + c^{2} - 10c < 0
which is equivalent to stating that
(a5)2+(b5)2+(c5)2<75. (a - 5)^{2} + (b - 5)^{2} + (c - 5)^{2} < 75.
In particular (c5)2<75(c - 5)^{2} < 75, from which we obtain c<14c < 14. Let us now observe that if 9<c<149 < c < 14 then a2+b2+c2a^{2} + b^{2} + c^{2} has at least 3 digits, while a+b+c3ca + b + c \leq 3c has 2. Hence cc is at most 9, and it is easy to check that the triple (1,2,9)(1, 2, 9) satisfies the required conditions.

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