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Brazilian Mathematical Olympiad

Number theory Difficulty 4.6 AIME Prove it Brazil

Prove that there is at least one nonzero digit between the 1,000,000th and the 3,000,000th decimal digits of 2\sqrt{2}.

Solution

Let us suppose that all digits between the 1,000,000th and the 3,000,000th decimal digits of 2\sqrt{2} are zeros. Then
2=n10106+ϵ,n∈Z, n<2⋅10106 and 0<ϵ<10−3⋅106⇔2⋅102⋅106−n2=2nϵ10106+ϵ2⋅102⋅106 \begin{aligned} \sqrt{2} &= \frac{n}{10^{10^6}} + \epsilon, && n \in \mathbb{Z},\ n < 2 \cdot 10^{10^6} \text{ and } 0 < \epsilon < 10^{-3 \cdot 10^6} \\ \Leftrightarrow 2 \cdot 10^{2 \cdot 10^6} - n^2 &= 2n\epsilon 10^{10^6} + \epsilon^2 \cdot 10^{2 \cdot 10^6} \end{aligned}
The left hand side is a positive integer. The right hand side is smaller than 1 nevertheless. The result thus follows.

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