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Algebra Difficulty 4.5 AIME Find the answer Italy

Problem:

How many integers nn are there such that n\sqrt{n} differs from 101\sqrt{101} by less than 1?

Pick one

Solution

Solution:

The answer is (D). Let us denote by A\mathcal{A} the set of integers nn satisfying the required property. Let us first observe that: 10181>10081=1\sqrt{101}-\sqrt{81}>\sqrt{100}-\sqrt{81}=1, that is 81A81 \notin \mathcal{A}.

If nn is a positive integer, the difference
n+1n=1n+1+n \sqrt{n+1}-\sqrt{n}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{n+1}+\sqrt{n}}
between the square roots of two consecutive integers decreases as nn increases. Consequently 8281>101100\sqrt{82}-\sqrt{81}>\sqrt{101}-\sqrt{100}, that is 10182<10081=1\sqrt{101}-\sqrt{82}<\sqrt{100}-\sqrt{81}=1, and therefore 82A82 \in \mathcal{A}; In the same way one shows that 122A122 \in \mathcal{A}, in fact 122121<101100\sqrt{122}-\sqrt{121}<\sqrt{101}-\sqrt{100}, from which 122101<121100=1\sqrt{122}-\sqrt{101}<\sqrt{121}-\sqrt{100}=1. To show that 123A123 \notin \mathcal{A}, one can do the brute calculation (123101)2=123+1012123101(\sqrt{123}-\sqrt{101})^{2}=123+101-2 \cdot \sqrt{123 \cdot 101}, that is one must show that 224>212423224>2 \cdot \sqrt{12423} that is that 12423<112\sqrt{12423}<112; this is true because 1122=12544>12423112^{2}=12544>12423.

Ultimately, A={nN:82n122}\mathcal{A}=\{n \in \mathbb{N}: 82 \leq n \leq 122\} and it is made up of 12282+1=41122-82+1=41 elements.

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