Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /231 of 520

Number theory Difficulty 6.0 National olympiad Prove it

Example 3 Take several different integers between two consecutive perfect squares n2n^{2} and (n+1)2(n+1)^{2}, prove that their pairwise products are all different.

Solution

Proof: Let integers a,b,c,da, b, c, d satisfy n2an^{2}a and c>ac > a, leading to q>pq > p and v>uv > u. Since p,q,u,vp, q, u, v are all integers, we have qp+1,vu+1q \geqslant p+1, v \geqslant u+1. Therefore, we get (note a=pu>n2a = p u > n^{2})
d=qv(p+1)(u+1)=pu+(p+u)+1>n2+2pu+1>n2+2n+1=(n+1)2\begin{array}{l} d = q v \geqslant (p+1)(u+1) = p u + (p+u) + 1 \\ > n^{2} + 2 \sqrt{p u} + 1 > n^{2} + 2 n + 1 = (n+1)^{2} \end{array}

Contradiction.

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: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.