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Number theory Difficulty 7.4 National Olympiad, round 2 Prove it Italy

Problem:

A model car is tested on some closed circuits 600 meters long, made up of flat sections and sections going uphill or downhill. All the uphill and downhill sections have the same slope. The tests bring to light some curious facts:

a. the speed of the model car depends only on whether the car is traveling along an uphill, flat, or downhill section; calling vs,vpv_{s}, v_{p} and vdv_{d} respectively these three speeds, we have vs<vp<vdv_{s}<v_{p}<v_{d};

b. vs,vpv_{s}, v_{p} and vdv_{d}, expressed in meters per second, are integers;

c. however the circuit is composed (with more or fewer uphill and downhill sections) the travel time is always 50 seconds.

Find all possible values of vs,vpv_{s}, v_{p} and vdv_{d}.

Solutions — 2

Solution 1

Solution:

We indicate all lengths in meters and all times in seconds, omitting the units of measure.
The possible triples of speeds are (vs,vp,vd)=(10,12,15),(9,12,18),(8,12,24)\left(v_{s}, v_{p}, v_{d}\right)=(10,12,15),(9,12,18),(8,12,24) and (7,12,42)(7,12,42).

Let us first consider a completely flat circuit of length 600. Hypothesis (c) then gives 50=600vp50=\frac{600}{v_{p}}, from which vp=60050=12v_{p}=\frac{600}{50}=12.

Let us then consider a generic circuit of length 600, in which the uphill section has length ss, the flat section pp and the downhill section dd.
By construction s+p+d=600s+p+d=600; moreover, in order for the circuit to close, the elevation gain given by the uphill sections must be the same as that given by the downhill sections: since the slopes are the same for all the non-flat sections, there must be as much uphill as downhill, that is s=ds=d.

The flat section then has length p=600sd=6002sp=600-s-d=600-2s, and the time taken by the car to travel the circuit is svs+pvp+dvd=svs+6002s12+svd=s(1vs+1vd16)+60012\frac{s}{v_{s}}+\frac{p}{v_{p}}+\frac{d}{v_{d}}=\frac{s}{v_{s}}+\frac{600-2s}{12}+\frac{s}{v_{d}}=s\left(\frac{1}{v_{s}}+\frac{1}{v_{d}}-\frac{1}{6}\right)+\frac{600}{12}, which is equal to 50=6001250=\frac{600}{12} if and only if s(1vs+1vd16)=0s\left(\frac{1}{v_{s}}+\frac{1}{v_{d}}-\frac{1}{6}\right)=0.

The speeds then satisfy condition (c) of the statement if and only if the previous relation holds for any closed circuit whatsoever, that is, for any choice of ss (between 0 and 300).

A necessary and sufficient condition on the speeds is therefore 1vs+1vd=16\frac{1}{v_{s}}+\frac{1}{v_{d}}=\frac{1}{6}; vsv_{s} and vdv_{d} are both different from zero, so we can rewrite this equation as vsvd=6(vs+vd)v_{s} v_{d}=6\left(v_{s}+v_{d}\right), that is (vs6)(vd6)=36\left(v_{s}-6\right)\left(v_{d}-6\right)=36.

vdv_{d} is an integer greater than vp=12v_{p}=12, so vd6v_{d}-6 is a divisor of 36 strictly greater than 6, that is it is one of 9, 12, 18 or 36 (which correspond respectively to the values 15,18,24,4215, 18, 24, 42 for vdv_{d}).

Solving the equation for vsv_{s} we finally obtain vs=6+36vd6v_{s}=6+\frac{36}{v_{d}-6}, that is vs=10,9,8,7v_{s}=10,9,8,7.

Solution 2

Solution:

Once we have obtained the equation 1vs+1vd=16\frac{1}{v_{s}}+\frac{1}{v_{d}}=\frac{1}{6} it suffices to observe that vs<vp=12v_{s}<v_{p}=12, and on the other hand we cannot have vs6v_{s} \leq 6, because otherwise 1vs16\frac{1}{v_{s}} \geq \frac{1}{6}, from which 1vd0\frac{1}{v_{d}} \leq 0, which is clearly absurd. It follows that the only possibilities for vsv_{s} are 7,8,9,10,117,8,9,10,11, and it is easy to check which of these lead to integer values for vdv_{d}.

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