Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.1 AIME, harder Find the answer

A man is standing on a platform and sees his train move such that after tt seconds it is 2t2+d02 t^{2}+d_{0} feet from his original position, where d0d_{0} is some number. Call the smallest (constant) speed at which the man have to run so that he catches the train vv. In terms of nn, find the nnth smallest value of d0d_{0} that makes vv a perfect square.

A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.

Solution

The train's distance from the man's original position is t2+d0t^{2}+d_{0}, and the man's distance from his original position if he runs at speed vv is vtv t at time tt. We need to find where t2+d0=vtt^{2}+d_{0}=v t has a solution. Note that this is a quadratic equation with discriminant D=v24d0D=\sqrt{v^{2}-4 d_{0}}, so it has solutions for real DD, i.e. where v4d0v \geq \sqrt{4 d_{0}}, so 4d04 d_{0} must be a perfect square. This happens when 4d04 d_{0} is an even power of 2: the smallest value is 202^{0}, the second smallest is 222^{2}, the third smallest is 242^{4}, and in general the nnth smallest is 22(n1)2^{2(n-1)}, or 4n14^{n-1}.

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