A man is standing on a platform and sees his train move such that after seconds it is feet from his original position, where is some number. Call the smallest (constant) speed at which the man have to run so that he catches the train . In terms of , find the th smallest value of that makes a perfect square.
Solution
The train's distance from the man's original position is , and the man's distance from his original position if he runs at speed is at time . We need to find where has a solution. Note that this is a quadratic equation with discriminant , so it has solutions for real , i.e. where , so must be a perfect square. This happens when is an even power of 2: the smallest value is , the second smallest is , the third smallest is , and in general the th smallest is , or .
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