5. 81 Find all real numbers such that the cubic equation
has three roots that are all natural numbers.
5. 81 Find all real numbers such that the cubic equation
has three roots that are all natural numbers.
[Solution] By observation, is a positive integer root of the given cubic equation.
Using synthetic division to reduce the original cubic equation to a quadratic equation
Obviously, the necessary and sufficient condition for the three roots of the original cubic equation to be natural numbers is that the two roots of the quadratic equation (1) are natural numbers.
Let the two natural number roots of equation (1) be and . Then by Vieta's formulas, we have
Substituting (2) into (3) and eliminating , we get
The above equation indicates that and are not multiples of .
From (4), we get
Since are both natural numbers, it follows from the above equation that
Since is not a multiple of 2 and 3, we have
From , we get
Therefore, .
Furthermore, since and , we have .
If , then .
If or 25, then is not a natural number.
Therefore, only when , the two roots of equation (1) are natural numbers, and thus the three roots of the original equation are natural numbers.