Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /4 of 13

Number theory Difficulty 5.0 AIME Prove it Italy

What is the exponent of the prime 22 in the factorization of the number
(51)(551)(55..51) (5-1)\left(5^{5}-1\right) \ldots\left(5^{5 . .^{5}}-1\right)
where in each factor there appears, as exponent, one more "55" than in the previous one, and in the last one there appear, as exponents, 20142014 of them?

Solution

The answer is 40304030. If dd is an odd integer, the expression 5d15^{d}-1 can be factored as (51)(5d1+5d2++1)(5-1)\left(5^{d-1}+5^{d-2}+\ldots+1\right) where the second factor contains dd odd addends, that is, an odd number of odd addends, and is therefore odd. A number of the form 5d15^{d}-1 with dd odd is therefore divisible by 44, and by no higher power of 22; since the expression in the problem is precisely a product of 20152015 factors of this form, the prime number 22 appears in its factorization with an exponent of 220152 \cdot 2015, that is 40304030.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

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